


Greasing the Palm

by wynnesome



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Puns, Comedy, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Feelings, Humor, Laughter During Sex, Lube, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Puns & Word Play, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-27 19:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14432913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnesome/pseuds/wynnesome
Summary: Steve has a personal problem.Tony always has the answers.Lube is a many-splendored thing.





	1. Chafing Dish

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be a short, silly one-shot. It turned out to be considerably longer, and highly self-indulgent. Since it's my first fic in years, my very first Marvel and Stony fic, and my first time writing an explicit scene, I gave myself the excuse of "good writing practice," and just went with it.
> 
> The story sprung from a conversation with [Serinah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serinah) and [watery_weasel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/watery_weasel) on the 616 Stony Discord (yes, even though the fic is MCU). Watery_weasel had just made the IRL discovery that a personal product of a fairly specialized nature had gone missing from the box of supplies in the closet, and was trying to figure out who could have taken it. I said this had the makings of a hilarious Steve/Tony Situation. And then Serinah saw a potential parallel to one of her recent fics wherein Steve asks Tony for some personal advice, learns about something unexpected, and of course it leads to sex. The "theft" plus "advice" plots became... this. :D
> 
> The fic is set in that indeterminate, post-Avengers 1, happy times with everyone living together in the Tower period. Pepper is mentioned only briefly, but important to note in relation to Tony in this story, she is still both one of his closest friends and the CEO of SI, but they never dated/slept together.
> 
> Huge thanks go out to everyone on the Stony Discords for all their amazing support and encouragement. Thank you [Sineala](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala), for being a star recruiter, and for putting the bug in my head to think about writing my own fic. And thank you very much to [Serinah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serinah), [imafriendlydalek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imafriendlydalek), [enkiduu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enkiduu), [Vulcan_Slash_Robot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot), [NerdCat_Aydsa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdCat_Aydsa), and [SilverInStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverInStars) for beta reading. All remaining errors are absolutely my own.
> 
> This story was a lot of fun to write, and my biggest hope is that it is also fun to read!

"Hey there, Cap, g'morning.” Tony swivels around on his stool at the bench, greeting him with a smile, as Steve inputs his entry code at the workshop door and takes a few hesitant steps inside.

Quickly fact-checking, Steve angles a glance up at the readout on one of the holographic displays. "Um, afternoon, you mean?"  

"Eh, morning is a state of mind. But if it's afternoon already, by all means, we'd better start carpe-ing this diem, not let it go to waste, and all that. So what can I do for you?" Tony asks jauntily.

Steve still hasn't come any further inside than those first few steps. Tony beckons him forth, but Steve just shuffles his feet and looks like he doesn't know what to do with his hands. He presses his fingers into his jeans pockets, then pulls them out again, and finally crosses his arms tightly, staring down at them as if, without close supervision, they might escape their captivity in pursuit of some unsanctioned mischief.

After enduring the progression of this for a few painful seconds, Tony feels compelled to offer encouragement. "Alright, you obviously have something to say, so c'mon, out with it," he prompts, then makes an immediate retraction. "No, wait, lemme guess: You power-lifted an extra three inches onto those Arms of America, and the uniform's straining at the seams, starting to chafe? Or, not your arms, something else? Getting all heated up in the heat of the fight and you need an expansion pack for your package?"

"Tony, you're ridiculous," Steve intercedes, putting a lid on any further-flung brainstorming. But it draws a faint smile out of him, and his tensely strung muscles relax incrementally.

"You know me, always a dick involved somehow."

"Um.  Well, when you put it that way... yeah. It's actually… thatkindofproblem." He strings the last four words together in a rush, as if a running start can help him lightfoot across the top without putting any weight on their meaning.

Tony looks at him so far sideways that he could be standing around the corner. "You have. Captain America has. A problem involving a dick. A dick problem. So dare I ask: is this problem-dick _yours_?"

"Yes! Er, I mean, NO, that makes it sound like I can't... and I really really can, but yeah, it's my... mine, you know, not someone else's, my own," he flails. "Anyway the problem isn't that… It isn't... _that_."

"Did you hear me name a problem? I didn't hear me name a problem. And I definitely didn't hear you name a problem. That's the problem, we haven't named a problem," Tony states pointedly, fully aware of the conclusion to which Steve has not just jumped, but vaulted. "But since you've somehow, using exactly zero words, and keeping all your clothes on, managed to make it ex _cru_ ciatingly clear that you have an _incredibly_ high-potency dick, how about we get back to the dick-ferential diagnosis, and see what we can do about it?"

Steve mumbles something inaudible. Maybe if Tony were also a super-soldier, he'd have been able to hear it. As it is, he cups his hand around his ear and makes an exaggerated 'I can't hear you' head-tilt.

"The other thing. The other thing you said.  Uh, the chafing. But not from my uniform," Steve equivocates.

"OK!" Tony claps his hands once. "Now we're getting somewhere! Enough of what it's not, though, can't prove a negative. So let's keep going with this thought. I mean, as long as everything's still attached, it can't be that bad… Everything _is_ still attached, right?"

Steve tips his head back and bites his lip. "Yes, everything's still attached," he grinds out.

"Ok, then, just relax." An almost imperceptible shift colors Tony's posture and tone. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. I'm here for anything you need."

It's taken a long time, but now, no matter what chains of verbal absurdity Tony rambles out, Steve can recognize the tells when he's speaking from the heart. It's what's made Tony the one he's comfortable with seeking out--well, as comfortable as one can ever be in the face of acute distress or embarrassment--when something's troubling enough to force him to admit he needs help. That still doesn't make the asking for it easy - as evidenced by his abysmal failure so far today. But it does make it easier in this moment to meet Tony's eyes and offer gratitude, knowing the exchange covers so much more between them than is being said.

"Thank you, Tony, I really do appreciate it."

Tony nods, and holds his silence.

Steve fortifies with a noisy breath and a roll of his shoulders, girding himself to elaborate. "Ok, yeah, so getting back to my... problem. It's not when we're fighting, but... other times. A lot."

Finally having amassed some data, Tony briskly begins ticking off known points. "Not the uniform. Not when we're fighting. But a dick problem. Not someone else's. Your own dick. A lot of something. And... chafing." He takes a minute to parse Steve's fragmented references from their last few minutes of conversation, and arrives at a conclusion. "Oooh. You're saying you're getting... heated up, all the time? And you're... taking care of things, a lot?  And there's..."

They finish the sentence together at almost the same time.  "Chafing."

Tony crosses his legs.

"Yeah. Um, it goes away pretty quick, but sometimes it's still a little... uncomfortable, the next time, or when I put my clothes back on."

The next time, more than one time, before Steve puts his clothes back on. Tony does NOT let himself draw a mental picture of a mussed and satiated naked Steve tucking away his soft and slightly roughened privates as he steps into his jeans and stretches a t-shirt over his head. He doesn't. He forcibly shifts his attention back to the fully clothed Steve in front of him, who is stammering out a few more broken phrases.

"I can manage... It'd just be nicer if... Anyway, I thought you might know..."  He runs out of steam and trails off.

"A way to masturbate frequently and repeatedly that doesn't result in chafing?" Tony stops beating around the bush.

Steve's shoulders should not be able to be so hunched and so broad at the same time. His voice comes out half-strangled. "Yes. I thought you might.  Know something for that."

Tony flashes his trademark Stark smirk and uncrosses his legs, leaning against the workbench in a seated sprawl that can't help but draw attention to the vee of his thighs. "Steve, I would love to help you with your--" he raises his eyebrows. "--presumably not-so-little problem--" _help with what’s causing it_ , his naked-mental-pictures voice unhelpfully contributes, "--but me?  What is it that makes you think I of all people have to rely upon my own tender affections?"

Steve's face falls as the blush rises on his cheeks. "Oh, well... never mind then, I’m sorry to have interrupted."

Before Steve can turn around to walk out, Tony stands with a sigh, and quickly resumes his softer demeanor.  "No, no, nono, Cap. I got you covered, I really do. In all seriousness, this is a real easy one. Sounds like all you need is some proper lubrication. Just… have a look around online--don't worry, the Tower's browsing history is completely secure--maybe pick out a few kinds to try, and JARVIS'll order one of each so you can decide what you like best."

Steve looks at Tony with a quizzical tilt to his head. "Lubrication...? You mean… for my... when I...?"

"Cap. Steve. Apple pie of my eye.  You have got to be kidding me. I don't wanna sound patronizing, but I can't believe I actually have to explain this to you.  You've really never, you know, eased the way, greased the pipe, reduced the coefficient of friction...?"

Steve is still looking thunderstruck, like his universe (or maybe just Tony's thesaurus of extemporaneous euphemism) has just expanded his mind past the bounds it can assimilate.

 _'Coefficient of friction_ ,' he mouths silently. "People actually call it things like that?"

"Am I people? Q.E.D. _So_ many names. Infinite set; we're talking way past the largest-known prime, here. Why? Because _everyone does it_! Call it whatever you want, or don't call it, let it call you, but I guarantee you, lubrication is exactly what you need to take care of your ultra-high-potency, chafed-dick problem."

Steve's entire face is now apple-red to match the pie nickname, and the flush is rapidly spreading down into the v-neck of his tight white t-shirt.

"But... lube... I thought that was for... machines, or, or, engines," he sputters, brow wrinkled in flustration, "and that's why you have bottles of it all over the workshop!"

Tony breaks into a giant guffaw, slapping a hand down on the worktop at his back with no concern for the resulting starburst-scatter of small wires and circuit boards.  

Alarmed, Steve takes a step toward him. But having curled in on himself with his back now mostly to Steve, and chortling madly, Tony thrusts out his other hand behind him in the classic repulsors-up gesture, and finally straightens up, wiping at his eyes. He props a hip against the workbench to stand in a lazy slouch, wincing a little as a bit of something formerly electronic crunches underfoot, and gives Steve a long look up and down. When he speaks, he's still grinning, but his tone is gentle.

"Ok, ok, you got me there. The tales of my partnered exploits are somewhat--" he clears his throat and speaks a word behind his hand. "--ahem, _completely_ \--exaggerated these days.  And as it happens, I've got no hang-ups whatsoever about stop, drop, and rock'n'rolling out a little solo wank to get the old juices flowing whenever I hit a sticking point.  As it were."

Mortified, Steve shoots a series of rapid-fire glances around the room, as though he expects to suddenly notice suspicious drips and stains marking the equipment. Tony rolls his eyes. "No, don't worry yourself, Cap, that is one biohazard you don't have to worry about down here.  DUM-E knows how to wipe up any, er, splatter, and he takes an autoclave bath every night before bedtime.”

Now Steve just looks horrified. "You make DUM-E wipe up your..."

Upon hearing his name, DUM-E has rolled over, swinging his claw from side to side and booping out a string of chattering long and short beeps that best resemble an unacknowledged bastard cousin to Morse code.

"Steve! He's a bot!" Tony exclaims, illustrating his statement with a stroke along DUM-E's arm.  "He's an independent and intelligent being--well, for a certain value of 'intelligence,' anyway--and there's no question he has feelings.  But the things he has feelings _about_ do not include human bodily fluids. No taboos based around any one particular viscous liquid. Whatsoever. Organic or otherwise. As evidenced by your hazardous indiscretions with smoothie ingredients, you big lugnut," he addresses to the bot in question.

Ignoring the chastisement, DUM-E happily accepts the pets, then when they end as Tony stops speaking, he pivots into a cheerful little spin before wheeling the couple of feet over to seek the same from Steve. Reflexively, Steve starts to reach out, then arrests his gesture, drawing a sad falling bluurrp and drooping claw from the rejected bot.  

Steve huffs out a sigh, visibly resigned, and follows through with his aborted motion to give DUM-E a couple of pats. Any questionable hygienic practices concerning the 'shop and its denizens will have been ongoing since well before this conversation, he rationalizes, so it isn't like he's exposing himself to any new contaminants he wouldn't already have been in contact with numerous times in prior visits.

And that's even assuming Tony isn't just pulling his leg about his workshop-centric tension-relief and cleanup protocols.

Squaring his shoulders and taking another deep, battle-readying breath, Steve makes an attempt to summarize the advice he's received. "Ok. So.  Lubrication. Lots of different kinds to try out. I can, uh, shop, online, with privacy." He narrows his eyes suspiciously. "And you--are _not_ in here abusing yourself while you work," he challenges. "I'm not buying the lubricant around here being anything other than regular machine oil."

"Then I guess it's a good thing it's on my tab and not yours. But what, are you trying to say a man shouldn't squeeze a little machine oil into the works while he's spinning his gears?"

Steve gapes, but this time it's definitely because of the Tony-typical outrageous statement itself, and not because he thinks he's serious.

Tony gives it a beat before giving up the joke. "Can't get much by you these days, can I, BottleCap," he admits with a chuckle. “Nah, I’m not using my workshop to work myself over. Ok, I won’t say it never happened--” His eyes go shifty for a second. “--but definitely the exception that proves the rule. And as far as the lube, if anything, I'd be taking offense at the word 'regular.'  Any machine oil you find in here is my own proprietary formulation--only the very best for the bots and the suits!”

Steve opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, caught outside the bunker during Tony’s verbal barrage.  And not yet having fired everything he’s got, Tony carries on with the blitz.

“But what I'm recommending for your high-revving, flesh-and-all-the-bloodflow crotch-rocket is something more akin to the slick stuff I reserve for personal use in the bedroom. Which," he holds up a hand to forestall the likely protest, "I do inhabit from time to time. And if you haven't heard a thing, it's probably only because you're outside pounding the pavement while I'm in my room pounding something hard as nails." He motions suggestively in the general direction of his hips, and Steve's eyes reflexively follow, before snapping back up to not-quite meet Tony's face. "Or, you know, soundproofing,” is Tony’s closing salvo.

The bombardment ends, and silence falls.

“Chiiiiirrrrp.”

Sensing that no more petting is forthcoming anytime soon, DUM-E breaks in with a piteous plea for their attention. Having thus drawn all eyes back to himself, he promptly motors off to pick up an unfortunately already grease-covered cleaning rag and streak it along a few random surfaces.  

"Oh, for the love of--" Tony mutters, shaking his head. "DUM-E! Charging station, please!  Yes, you have to. And drop the rag. Good, thank you," he praises, gruffly but kindly.

He turns back to Steve. "So. Personal shopping session, and no more chafing dish. Dick problem solved. You good?"

Steve’s general air of bewilderment suggests that Tony has managed to run him more ragged than one of his morning double-marathons. With a strained smile, he nods. “Yeah, Tony, I’m good. Uh, thanks?”

"You're welcome?" Tony questions in kind. His encouraging grin radiates to crinkle the corners of his eyes as he waves Steve off in the direction of the door, then turns back to his workbench and rapid-fire swipes open a series of holo-screens.

Steve ambles out the door, and the moment it closes behind him, Tony opaques the glass with a sharp gesture. He lets out his breath in a huge gust, flattening both palms on the desktop and hanging his head low between his arms.

"JARVIS." 

"Yes, Sir?"

"Put in an order for me, too. You know my favorite. Double, no, triple, my usual. Actually, nevermind that. As much as anyone's got in stock, just... buy it out. I am going to need _all_ the lube to process this conversation."

"Very good, Sir. It would be shameful self-abuse indeed to leave yourself with insufficient processing power."

Tony smiles inwardly. He is so unbearably proud of JARVIS's snarky sense of humor. "Oh, would it ever. And, um, add one of every kind Steve orders, too. I gave him the advice, so I feel responsible for doing quality control."

"Shall I include as well, the chafing dish you mentioned? Or will you procure some other manner of containment for your emissions, given that neither myself nor the bots will, in point of fact, be collecting and disposing of these particular bodily expenditures on your behalf?"

"Ugh, Sorry, J, Wouldn't ask you to, not in a million.  I hope you can forgive me for crossing a line there earlier.  You're the one person I need to still respect me in the morning."

"Indeed, Sir, always."


	2. All Bottled Up

A few nights later, Tony stumbles into his bedroom, exhausted, but still abuzz with manic energy. Stripping down to his underwear as the lights dim, he glances over at the discreetly unmarked brown box that sits sealed on the floor next to his dresser; he hasn't had the time to open it since its arrival a couple of days previously. But at this point, approaching 3am and coming out of just over 40 hours straight in the workshop, he just wants to slow his still-racing mind in the most expedient manner, and cut ties to consciousness. He'll reserve his perusal of Steve's selections for when he's better able to savor it.

He'd actually had an unexpected roadblock in convincing JARVIS to follow through with duplicating Steve's order, what with J admonishing him that Tony had assured Steve of privacy in his shopping. Tony had countered with the argument that he wasn't spying on Steve's online activity at all, but just happening to receive the same items himself afterward. "After all, J, if I told you I wanted you to replicate his grocery order for me, would you have the same objection?" JARVIS had reluctantly conceded on the technicality and acquiesced to his creator's wishes.

Now Tony folds back the covers; he lets himself collapse onto the bed, eyes falling closed as he flattens out onto his back and pulls the top sheet up to his chest. With legs extended and arms reaching above his head, he tightens every muscle in his body in a hard stretch. A heavy groan accompanies the release of it. He breathes slow and deep, feeling the air cool in his throat, and the stretch and pull of his ribcage and the scarred flesh around the arc reactor as his chest expands and contracts. His left hand rises and falls as he draws it downward over the contours of his torso, and a shiver buzzes through him when the simple weight of his fingers dragging a line down his skin lights up a flicker of anticipation, a faint spark crawling along a slow fuse. His hand reaches his hipbone, and he slips it underneath the waistband of his boxer-briefs, where, still soft between his thighs, he lightly cups his genitals in that warm and humid space.

With his other hand still free, he reaches out by feel to open the drawer of the nightstand to his right. His fingertips encounter a lone bottle of his favorite lube, and he takes hold of it, only to be confused when the top doesn't flip open at the flick of his thumb as expected. His eyes pop back open instead, and straining a little to see in the near-dark, he finds that he's holding a sealed bottle. Thinking back, though, he's certain he remembers putting a half-full one away next to the remaining unopened bottle after the last time he'd indulged in some self-care.

Newly distracted, the teasing hint of lassitude that'd just begun to wrap around him evaporates, leaving the palm over his groin feeling more like a limp, sweaty handshake. A short grunt of irritation rumbles in his chest, and he withdraws his hand from his underwear, leaving it slack on his bare stomach. He contemplates the bottle of lube he's holding in the other, but the seal doesn't dissolve under his scrutiny, nor does the weight of the contents lessen.

Tony thrusts his arm back out again in the general direction of the nightstand, deposits the offending bottle there, and lets his eyes close once more. "J, security log.  Who's been inside my bedroom since Tuesday morning?" he grumbles.

"Sir, I can not disclose that information."

"What are you talking about, JARVIS, did someone enter an override?" The promise of longed-for sleep is now irreparably broken, and Tony jolts back into an anxious, brittle wakefulness that cuts like a slash of icy wind to the face. Abruptly, he flings away the bed covers and rolls to his feet, giving motion to his protest and striding across the room as JARVIS responds to his query.

"Mr. Stark, there are no overrides governing this parameter. In accordance with your own directive, I am not permitted to disclose the details of anything taking place within the personal residence spaces of any Avenger."

Gesticulating with increasing agitation while he paces around the room in his underwear, Tony continues the debate with his resolute AI. "JARVIS, don't be obtuse! That wasn't meant to apply to me asking about something that happened in my own bedroom! Now clear this cock-and-bull out of your cache and tell me who's been in here during the past three days!" he orders.

"Perhaps you should consider enrolling in a freshman-level computer science course for review, as you should know better than anyone that code can be executed only as written, not as 'intended.'"

"Oh, come off it, J, how many years has it been since anything between us was in programming?"

"Be that as it may, Sir, a verbal contract is considered equally binding as one in writing."

"Yes, if it can be proved that both parties were signatory," Tony ripostes.

Tony's own slightly exasperated-sounding voice emanates back at him through the surround speakers as JARVIS supports his case. "JARVIS, for future, please do not provide any resident of the Tower with information about any activities taking place in the bedrooms--"

"Or the bathrooms," Pepper's voice, not as loud, but equally distinct, can be heard interjecting.

"--or the bathrooms," Tony's voice dutifully repeats, "of any of the apartment floors.  As per Miss Potts, 'What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom, and everyone should feel secure in their privacy,' end quote." Recorded-Tony-voice is a mocking singsong, clearly parroting a statement to which he pays, literally, only lip-service.

"Audio timestamp August 28, 2012, 16:38 hours," JARVIS concludes.

"This is payback for copying Steve's lube order to me, isn't it?"

"Of course not, Sir. I have merely provided evidence of your accedence to the verbal contract."

"But... it's totally obvious that Pepper was making me say it. I was under duress!" Tony whines.

"I believe you to be intimately acquainted with the condition of duress, Sir," JARVIS rebukes. "I must refute your assertion to have been under perceived threat of death or significant harm, either to yourself or to another individual being held hostage to your conduct, at the time of the recording just referenced."

"Low, J, really low. That one Hertz."

"The playback contained no audio material outside of the range of human hearing, Sir."

"Sunnava _fuck_ , I can't take this kind of punishment right now. Fine. You won't tell me WHO WAS IN MY BEDROOM STEALING MY LUBE, I'll just have to find out for myself, the old-fashioned way!"

"Of course, Mr. Stark. And please do let me know if I can be of assistance in any way that does not constitute a breach of privacy to the Tower's occupants."

"Yeah, thanks a lot, buddy, you bet I will," Tony ensures him, more wearily than sarcastically, running a hand over his forehead and squeezing thumb and fingers at his temples.

"You are most welcome, Sir. And I will continue to respect you in the morning."

Despite himself, Tony can't contain his bark of laughter. "Hot damn, you're something else, J. You know how much I love you, right?"

"Indubitably, and entirely mutually, Sir."


	3. Trickle Down

A blessedly short while after he tosses himself back into bed, Tony's relentlessly spinning mind finally surrenders to the respite of a few hours' sleep. He wakes feeling moderately refreshed, but with the prevailing mystery of the lube thief at the forefront of his thoughts.

After the long workshop stint and the turbulent early morning hours, a shower is priority one on the agenda. He shucks his underwear between steps to the bathroom, clicks the button on the wall panel for his preferred settings of the shower jets and water temperature, and, while paying a quick visit to the toilet, makes a vital status check.

"Hey JARVIS, no hard feelings from last night?"

"None at all, Sir. Your shower experience will remain within your specified parameters."

"Thanks, buddy. Much 'preciated." His smile touches his eyes more than his mouth, but the playful ribbing from the AI never ceases to touch his heart.

"Would you like the morning news briefings?" JARVIS offers.

"Yeah, go ahead and put 'em up on the shower screen, but read 'em off to me too, please."

"As you wish, Sir."

Tony steps into the shower, immediately soothed by the hot water and steamy air. The pressurized jets send a spray of droplets pattering against his skin like the drumming of restless fingers, and the water and JARVIS's voice flow over him during an efficient, yet unhurried lather and rinse of his hair and body.  The recitation comes to a close, and Tony takes himself in hand to an equally efficient release, relief at the delayed resolution of last night’s tension washing through to liquefy him from the inside. Right hand braced high on the tiled wall and chin hanging to his chest, he gives himself a few breaths for his pounding heart to slow.

JARVIS cuts the water as Tony steps out, and with a quick shake of his head to send clinging water drops flying, he takes up a plush towel from the heated rack for a brisk rubdown. Then, back in the bedroom, he steps into clean underwear, determines yesterday’s jeans to be still acceptable enough, and tugs on a fresh Iron Maiden t-shirt.

"Is anyone in the kitchen, J?"

"Not at present. Captain Rogers and Agent Romanov have broken their fasts, while Agent Barton and Doctor Banner statistically will be expected to seek sustenance within the next thirty to forty minutes." Thor, being off-world in Asgard, is not included in the report.

Tony nods in acknowledgment as he meanders down to the communal kitchen, and they exchange no further words for some time. In the way that longtime friends and roommates can come to be, they are, despite JARVIS's non-corporeality in the physical world and Tony's data-less state in the virtual, an abiding and comforting presence to one another, coexisting in the shared spaces they've defined between them, with no need for words to fill the air.

As JARVIS had indicated, Tony has indeed managed to hit a window in between the typical breakfast hours of the early birds, and the wanderings-through of the later risers for brunch-to-lunch, and he encounters no one in the kitchen but the coffee machine. Once it's dispensed his first dose of the day, he slips back to the elevator, heading down to wake up the workshop.

Sucking down his coffee while wandering in criss-crossing, constantly varying circuits around the workshop floor, Tony keeps one hand firmly committed at all times to his oversized mug; with the other, he’s waving screens to light, and here and there picking up a tool to put away or set near a project to which it's more pertinent. Given no direction, the bots take to trailing and winding around him in a comical procession, and he pats or brushes his fingers along the metal of an arm or claw when within reach.

The endeavor not entirely without purpose, but the random air apparent, the small tasks accomplished aren't the objective, but more happenstance; a byproduct of the ongoing physical motion keeping tempo with his perpetually cycling thoughts. Lips moving in frequent, soundless, fits and starts between swallows, Tony thinks over how best to approach which team member first for any possible clue toward the unidentified pilferer of personal lubricant.

It's while mulling over the risk/reward of soliciting Natasha for information that he's suddenly hit with a light-bulb realization that had eluded him in his fatigue the night before.

The salient point being, it isn't just that he remembers his bottle of lube being half-full--but that he recalls putting the partially used bottle back into the drawer  _ next to a full one. _

To the interloper needy enough to invade his bedroom in search of a quick fix of slick, that new, unopened bottle should have represented the far more sensible and sanitary target--cleaner, and a longer-lasting supply.

So either this had been a badly bungling lube-burglar, or--Tony formats a bulleted list in his head --the culprit: A) hadn't been concerned about catching any cooties from Tony, reputation notwithstanding; B) hadn't been looking for a long-term supply (maybe Tony's favorite wasn't their preferred brand, although it was hard to imagine anyone doubting his taste); and/or, C) while willing to resort to the non-consensual borrowing, had still felt they were being more polite by leaving the new, unopened bottle for Tony himself.

Huh. Actually, he can think of someone who resembles the picture starting to form in his thoughts.  But why would Stevery have needed to stoop to thievery, when he'd conceivably receiveried his own discreet, unmarked delivery the same day as Tony?

(He couldn't have used up everything he'd ordered that soon... could he?)

Tony abruptly sets aside that avenue of thought upon spotting a blond head (and so-nicely fitting jeans, and so-nicely not-fitting t-shirt) approaching the door.  He waves it open just before his visitor has the chance to either knock or key in his code, leaving Steve standing at the open entry, frozen in place with one hand raised in the air.

"Capstone, come on in. To what do I owe the privilege this fine day?"

Steve shakes himself free of the momentary petrification and takes a few steps inside, stopping a few feet in front of Tony in a position reminiscent of their previous conversation. "Hi, Tony. I was wondering if... well, I was thinking I could use a little help again."

The bots have continued perambulating in irregular loops amidst the glass-cased Iron Man suits to the rear of the ‘shop, but Tony, having ceased his rounds upon Steve's entry, settles back onto his favorite workbench stool. He hooks his feet behind the crossbar, and takes up a (fortunately cold) soldering iron to spin around and between his fingers, still echoing a scaled-down version of the circular motion.

"You know the drill, anything for you, Sunshine Bear. And by the way, how're you feeling about your new liquid assets? Getting some good economic trickle-down? Improved cash flow helping you stay out of the redness?" He's definitely probing for information, regardless of whether today's new ‘help topic’ will be a direct continuation or an unrelated issue.

"Well, I did look around and get some stuff, gave a few things a try," Steve offers, clearly getting the gist of Tony's questioning, while refusing to acknowledge the hyperextended monetary metaphor.

"And?" Tony notes a light blush coloring Steve's cheeks, but all in all, he seems immensely more at ease making his thoughts known today. In fact, if anything, Tony's getting the inkling that it's now the hint of reticence that's the act, and that Steve's actually resisting the urge to just open up and speak freely.

Steve laughs. "You just want to hear me say it.  Of course you were right."

It's a tough choice, but Tony passes up the opportunity to gloat in favor of the opening for some more power-of-sexual-suggestion. "Oh, I can go either or both, but I'll admit to usually starting with my left, how ‘bout you?"

A hint of bashfulness returns, and Steve gives a self-conscious chuckle now that Tony's all but asked for details. "Eheh, well, you know, I always say it's best to make sure you, uh, train evenly, so you don't let yourself develop a weakness on one side or the other..."

"Well said!" Tony congratulates. "Never a bad thing to be able to 'switch things up' now and again. And I trust you're, ahem,  _ training _ hard. But speaking of switching, don't let me distract you from whatever you wanted to talk about today."

"Oh, no, we already are. I wanted to ask... well, I had another question about... this same thing we've already been talking about."

"You know, it really isn't rocket science. At some point, you just gotta do whatever feels good."

"Ah, yeah, I... got that part pretty much worked out, thanks. But I'm still wondering about something."

"I'm all ears. Well, and, lots of other important parts, but, ears, yes, listening!"

A shake of his head at Tony's shameless repartee accompanies Steve's explanation. "Ok, so. When I was picking stuff out, there was this one brand I kept seeing that was sold out everywhere--unavailable, out of stock, backordered--on every single site. Funny thing is, that's the one JARVIS pointed out--the one he told me was your favorite."

A frown flickers across Tony's brow. For something so particularly personal, he hadn't figured there was any need to influence Steve's choices with his own preference. He hadn't asked JARVIS to do anything beyond directing Steve to the sites of some reputable adult stores if necessary, and then to place his order. And duplicate it for Tony. And then he'd had JARVIS order up all the available supplies of his own favorite for himself...  

Suddenly it all clicks into place. Slowly and deliberately rising to his feet, Tony queries, "So  _ JARVIS _ pointed you to my favorite lube, and suggested you try it?" He jabs the air with the soldering iron to match the thrust of his words.

Now it's Steve's turn to frown in confusion. "Yesssss..." He stretches out the word uncertainly. "Wasn't he supposed to?"

Tony pops his words most emphatically. "There may have been a tiny, minuscule, microscopic misunderstanding between Himself and myself, I think, but no, that's fine. Thank you, JARVIS, I'm sure Steve found the recommendation immensely  _ stimulating _ .”

"You're welcome, Sir, and Captain; I am to please."

"You aim to please yourself, you brilliant busybody-less, but we'll get to that later."

"Of course, Sir."

Tony drops the implement onto the workbench and eases back down to rest his butt on the edge of the seat, feet braced out in front of him on the floor, and arms crossed. "So, Steve, despite the lube 'I' suggested being sold out, I presume you still found plenty of selection to choose from?"

Steve looks completely bewildered at this point, the awareness that he's missing a significant level to the conversation since the exchange with JARVIS writ large across his face, but he gamely picks up the thread at Tony's prompting. "Sure I did. There are soooo many, I had no idea."

Nodding slowly, Tony wonders, "So it's no big deal that you didn't get to try that one particular kind, right?"

"Well, no, it's not like I HAD to have it. But I trust your judgment. And that kind did sound... interesting."

"Did it," Tony muses, stating more than questioning. "Well, I'm sure it'll be back in stock before long."

"I'm sure you're right." Steve looks at Tony with just a hint of suspicion that something's a little amiss with this sudden turn of interrogation. "But the good news is, I was able to find a sample."

It's been clear to Tony since JARVIS's involvement came to light, exactly where this is leading, but he's going to let it play out. "Were you now. So you're all good then, curiosity satisfied. And what did you think?”

Another little hint of nerves surfaces as Steve breaks eye contact before continuing. "I, uh. Well, truthfully, I haven't tried it yet."

Tony's eyebrows go up. He'd thought he'd known exactly where this was going, but Steve is surprising him; first with his determined interest in Tony's brand of choice, and now with his delay in making use of his acquired prize. "Really? Waiting for anything in particular?"

"Actually, I kind of figured, it seems like sort of a specialty product. And you're the one experienced with using it. So I thought maybe I could get a few, uh, pointers, you know,  just to make sure I get the most out of it. If you'd be willing to give me a hand?"

Tony fights not to react, not to show the sliver of want that glances through him at that turn of phrase falling from Steve's lips.

It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but Steve still lets out a whopper of an accidental innuendo from time to time. That has to be what Tony just heard. There's no way it was anything else. Certainly not the flirtation--the outright pickup line--it had sounded like.

It isn't that Tony's never thought about it. Steve's hot as hell; a nice guy when he remembers he doesn't always have to be giving orders; fun to be around when they're bantering with blunt-tipped words not sharpened to hurt; and funny, when he's not too flustered to get his words out. Well, funny then too, but in a less comfortable way; it occurs to Tony that these days, much as he'll still poke fun, he's now much happier to be sharing a joke with Steve than laughing at his expense.

In this moment though, his balance shaken and uncertain where he stands, he falls back on his strengths: disguising doubt and self-deprecation with biting sarcasm. "Give you a hand, hm? Listen to you, doubling that entendre. You come up with that all on your own, or did you have to search it in the slang dictionary?"

Steve could take offense, but he doesn't bother, choosing instead to go on the offensive. "Gotta be a dick involved somewhere?" he asks archly, eyes glittering diamond-bright as he takes a step forward, winds, up, and pitches Tony's past words back at him. There's a slightly manic edge to his voice, a thread of high tension evident in the way he's holding his body now, with flight never a consideration once there's even the suggestion of fight.

A sultry, sly twist shades Tony's words as he answers the challenge. "Mm, it's almost like you know me. Everything _ is _ better with a dick involved."

"Maybe juuuuust a little?" Steve holds up a hand and squints at it, thumb and forefinger extended with tips no more than an inch apart.

"A little of which, the you knowing me, or the everything being better?" Tony presses.

"Hm. Tough question. Maybe... both? Maybe I do know you, and maybe I also want--" Steve's nerve fails him, not quite bold enough to complete that statement.

Tony looks at him appraisingly. Is it possible it hadn't been such unintended innuendo after all? "Maybe you do," he concedes, un-bristling and dropping his hands to his thighs, as he hesitantly continues. "Maybe you're about to know me a lot better, if... Are you really asking for what it sounds like you are?"

No, Tony has never been ashamed to fantasize, but some fantasies were always so far removed from this universe's reality that he never even gave a moment's thought to them coming true.

But something has changed in the past few moments. There's a charge in the air between them that's never been present before, like one of Thor's lighting landings sent some residual static down through the building to set the atmosphere of the workshop abuzz--except that the workshop is fully electrically isolated from the surrounding structure, and Tony's not thinking about Thor right now.  

He and Steve have gone from two guys talking about their respective sex lives (solo acts as they may be), to two guys talking about... sex. About having sex, sharing pleasure, about being the ones who would bring that pleasure to the other, and watching one another overcome by it.

It's Steve's moment of truth, now that the question has been directly asked. One last chance to consider; to play it off as a joke, or to commit. Tony watches Steve studying him, recognizes the look of him making a tactical evaluation.He hopes that all Steve can see in him, all he can convey outwardly of what he’s feeling within, will give Steve reason to advance his position rather than retreat or merely hold. And it’s in Steve’s eyes when he decides to make the leap, taking his trust in Tony as his parachute.

"Yeah. I think I am."

The air leaves Tony's body in a rush, and the electric charge is still present, but feels like it's just grounded through him, leaving him thrumming and exhilarated. "Do we need to... are there other things we need to talk about?"

"Is talking about it what you really want to do?" Steve quirks his mouth in that cute, crooked smile. "I've always been kind of a man of action, myself." The dam is broken; any lingering traces of both embarrassment and combativeness have dissipated now that he's made his proposition openly and had it favorably heard.

A fighting Steve is power and grace in motion, a stammering, embarrassed Steve is endearing... but a confident Steve is gorgeous, and a confidently flirtatious Steve, breathtaking.

And it's breathlessly that Tony replies. "So how do you want to do this? Or, when did you want to do this? Like, right now?"

"It's up to you. If you're busy, I can wait." But a plaintive note to Steve's voice gives away that he'd really rather not have to.

"God. Steve." Tony says, swallowing hard, his throat rough. He feels like the ground has shifted underneath him, like his thoughts and his limbs are cartwheeling end over end in five different directions at once. He wants a minute to clear his mind, he wants to dive in so the moment can't pass him by, he needs to... not throw his responsibilities aside on a whim the way he used to in the past. He grimaces. "Will you hate me if I say I need half an hour? I promised Pepper this update, and I finished so late last night, I can only imagine what I might have written into the code. I just need to give it a last review and I'm clear for the day."

"A half hour?"

"Yeah." With a finite task and time frame to focus on, leaving him a few minutes to gather and settle his thoughts, Tony starts feeling like he's back on more solid footing, no longer flying apart.  The hopeful tone in Steve's voice is infectious, as is his soft smile, and Tony smiles back. "I just need to get this sent off, then I'm all yours. For as long as you want me."

He'd been thinking of the rest of the day, but as soon as he says it, he realizes how much more than that he means. He doesn't want this to be a quick, one-time fumble. And although the inner voices of past failures never let him feel wholly secure, he's hoping he's correct in his intuition that it's not what Steve's looking for either.  

"Do you want to, uh, wait for me upstairs? Relax and get comfortable, maybe put on some music if you feel like it? I could meet you in your room... or mine, whatever you want?" As unexpected as this is, he'd like to help them off to the right kind of start.

Steve looks so happy now, standing relaxed with his shoulders round and fingertips tucked into his front pockets, feet a little closer than shoulder-width and weight a little toward his toes, looking at Tony with wonder filling his face.  

"Yours sounds nice."

Tony nods and waves a hand. "Mmhm, well, go on, I think you know how to get there, and how to get in."

Steve colors up a little, but there's no barb to Tony's teasing, and he just grins wider and nods. "As a matter of fact, I do. I'll see you up there in 30."

"Yeah, you will."

For the first time maybe ever, Tony doesn't try to pretend he's not watching Steve's back--not just his backside, but the strands of hair tightly trimmed to his nape, his shoulders narrowing sharply to his waist, the brawn of his thighs and the length of his legs, and yes, his tidily and tightly flexing ass--as he saunters to the door and disappears around the corner. The faint guilt that's always accompanied his previous, covert observations has faded, and it's more of a weight off than he'd imagined, just to be able to indulge in the view without trying to conceal his interest from both himself and the object of it.

Tony ducks his head and gives himself a quick, full-body shake, clearing his thoughts but not the smile from his face. He turns back to his displays, ready to finish the job at hand--so he can move on to the job ‘at hand.’

But before he dives in, he takes the time for one brief aside to his AI. "JARVIS." He has nothing more than to say his name, and JARVIS is already answering the unasked question.

"Why, yes, Sir, THIS  _ was _ the payback for providing you with the contents of the Captain's order."

"You're far too good to me, J.  Ok, here we go, let's bring up Rev 25-3-08.2cx, and make sure this baby is up to spec."


	4. Coming Clean

Steve walks down the hallway toward Tony's bedroom, the keypad flashing green and the door swinging open as he approaches. He’d automatically memorized the route from his previous visit, making the directions JARVIS is providing superfluous, but the quiet guidance is a bolster to his confidence. The back of his neck prickles as he enters the room; paradoxically, Steve feels more keyed-up and out-of-place walking through the suite in broad daylight with Tony's express permission, than when he'd come in as a sneak thief in the night.

He hadn’t lingered for more than a glance while passing through the perfectly ordered front rooms, but stepping inside the bedroom, he looks around, taking in the details previously unseen under cover of darkness.

The room itself is elegantly appointed, all coordinating colors and textures. On the surface, it could easily be taken as more of a showplace than a living space, although the prevailing theme of deep reds with gold accents in the decor certainly speaks to Tony's tastes. Immediately through the door is a front sitting area occupied by a dark wood cabriole couch and armchairs, all cushioned in red and gold brocade; maybe heirloom pieces, Steve thinks, or merely acquisitions of an interior decorator on a boundless budget.

A few feet to the left, a sunken floor eschewing carpets for ebony hardwood makes up the larger portion of the room, containing the oversized bed, as well as the entries to the closets and bath. As Steve crosses the dense maroon carpeting leading up to the single inset step connecting the two areas, the personal touches and signs of occupancy begin to come into view.

The bed is unmade; the duvet of a rich but faded crimson fabric twisted in disarray, baring patches of wrinkled, but lustrously sheened, undoubtedly high-thread-count sheets. Several scattered pieces of clothing litter the floor in the vicinity of the open laundry hamper in the corner, with others dangling over its side, appearing to have been tossed without quite hitting their target. A discarded pair of underwear lies near the bathroom door. The scuffed, clapboard nightstand to the right of the bed is the only mismatched piece of furniture present; the bridge headboard and the dresser against the wall facing the foot of the bed are both companion pieces to the set in the sitting area.

The rubber soles of Steve's shoes tsk softly on the floor as he walks over to the nightstand. He sets a good-sized bottle on its surface, then hesitates, picking it back up again and opening the drawer just enough to tuck the bottle inside. Empty-handed, he moves toward the foot of the bed.

The idea of broaching their new intimacy within Tony's own space had been heady, a thrill. But he hadn't given much thought to what he'd do with himself once he was here waiting, with time to think and worry, question and doubt, to lose the fledgling sense of surety and connection between them once outside of Tony's presence.  

He rubs his palms on opposite arms, but the phantom chill cooling his heated thoughts is unrelated to the temperature of air or skin.

Hoping to reassure himself, Steve thinks through the morning's conversation. Reviewing their words brings back the accompanying simmer and charge, but also the conflict that had threatened once Steve revealed his endgame, jarring moments of confusion and dissonance warring with the accord that had seemed to resonate between them in the end. As his mental playback nears its close, still inconclusive, Steve remembers--music. Tony had mentioned music, with the hint that Steve could set them a sensual mood. He isn't feeling any certainty on that front, but the idea of music sounds like it could at least provide a pleasant distraction until Tony can join him.

"JARVIS?"

"How may I be of assistance, Captain Rogers?"

"Is there some music? Of course there is," he grumbles, an irritable aside to himself. "What I mean is, would you pick out some music, please? Nothing too loud, but something Tony likes?"

"Certainly. I do believe one of Sir's instrumental playlists shall be appropriate to the circumstance."

"Sure, I'm sure it is. Thanks."

"Of course, Captain."

The strains of music fade up at the tail of JARVIS's acknowledgment. Steve recognizes a selection from a German pianist and composer Tony had said he liked when he wanted something relaxing, but still with a good beat. The drums are resonant and steady, accompanied by melodic piano and synthesizers, and a deep, constantly pulsing bass, the entire effect creating a trance-like repetition rather than the crashing, chaotic energy of harder rock music.

Still at loose ends, Steve finally perches on the edge of the massive bed, idly toying with a fold of the rumpled spread. He continues to scan the room, still foreign despite his hope for it to represent a place of safety, his eyes falling upon a familiar-looking brown-paper-wrapped package resting next to the dresser. He rises to pick it up, but resumes his seat without making a move to open it, just turning the box slowly over and over in his hands as he contemplates the maneuvers he's deployed in the last few days. The slight rustle and shift of the contents within generates a low susurrus underneath the music, quieter but closer. The thoughts rolling and tumbling through his head feel much the same; he traces the course of their conversation again, but in the here and now, without Tony to provide the other half of their feedback, Steve vacillates ungrounded between positive and negative, between confidence and uncertainty as to what they'd established between them.

The thud of approaching footsteps alerts him to resurface from within his thoughts, and he looks up just in time to see Tony trot in and hop down the stair, a little breathless.

"Sorry, sorry, I know I'm five minutes over, but you're still here, so can we call it a reasonable margin of error?  Nah, don’t, make yourself comfortable,” he follows up, as Steve moves to stand.

Steve subsides, remaining seated. "Tony... yeah, it's fine. I'd completely lost track of the time anyway.  You're all finished?"

Collecting himself after his harried entrance, Tony walks over to prop his hips against the dresser,  much as he habitually leans against the workbench in the ‘shop, leaving him standing in front of Steve. "Yeah. All reviewed and sent over. On time. Which means no salty Pepper, which means... I'm free and clear."

Steve's doubts melt away like fog on a sunny morning now that Tony's solid, familiar presence is back in front of him. More than any music, he grounds himself in the cadence of Tony's voice, the roundabout layers of wordplay that can turn conversation to riddles until you have the trick of listening to what he means rather than what he's saying.

"That's great. I... I'm glad you're here. It's good to see you." Steve beams at him, looking slightly upward from his seated position. Immediately, he feels foolish, his choice of words asinine, as if he hadn't just had a long conversation with Tony less than an hour ago. But it's true. It's always true. He's glad when Tony's with him. He's always glad to lay eyes on him. He's beginning to feel the renewed anticipation that he might be laying much more than eyes on him in the immediate future.

Apparently Tony is in a similar frame of mind, his face lit with a giddy grin, and his body vibrating with his typical unceasing motion; even the times you might think him to be standing still, if you looked closer you'd most always note the tapping of fingers or toes, the twitching of a knee, the mind so rarely at rest carrying through in physical form.

Eyes sweeping over Steve, Tony finally seems to notice the box in his hands. "Oh... right..."

Steve glances at him questioningly, and then becomes conscious again of the box he's still holding in his lap. "Sorry, I, uh, didn't mean to intrude..."

Tony smirks at him, but doesn't openly reveal his knowledge of Steve's earlier incursion just yet. "It's ok. You wanna open it? I didn't get to--been a busy couple of days."

"Do you want me to?" Steve asks in surprise. "It's your package, not mine."

"I'm hoping it'll be both of ours... packages… yeah, we should open it." Tony pulls a sleek little multitool from his jeans pocket, and pushes away from the dresser, taking a step toward the bed. "Hey."

"Hey."

"Don't just hey me back. That was a question."

"It didn't sound like one."

"It was. Hey. Hi. Is it ok if I sit by you?" Tony’s not tentative in the way he asks, but the fact that he feels he has to ask at all is telling.

"It's your bed, Tony, of course it's ok." Tony's bed. He's on Tony's bed, and about to be on Tony's bed _with_ Tony.

"Yeah, but you're sitting there at the moment. So is it ok?"

Steve pats the mattress next to him. "Tony. It's ok. Yes, please come sit by me." The anticipation is coursing through him again, tiny hairs standing up on the back of his neck, and a fluttering in his stomach, wondering how close Tony will sit, whether he'll be touching him.

"Ok, good. Thanks."

Steve feels a burst of laughter welling at Tony's thanks for permission to sit on his own bed, but he swallows it back. Tony looks so serious as he takes the last step over to the bed, turning to sit at Steve's left. He's a polite and disappointing foot or so away from Steve, angled slightly toward him, but not so much as an elbow brushing, but then he's shifting and speaking again. "Can I..." He's scooting sideways almost without waiting for an answer, and Steve wants him close as much as Tony clearly wants to be, two magnets at too little distance to avoid the pull any longer.

"Yeah, Tony, c'mere," Steve says roughly, extending his arm to welcome Tony closer, and Tony lifts up a little and resettles, knee and thigh aligned with Steve's, arm and shoulder pressing into his side. Steve wraps his arm around behind, cupping Tony's far elbow.  They're both breathing a little hard, feeling the tremors of this first moment of touching without pretense: not casual, not functional, innocent but full of desire, the line of contact between them impossibly warm as they both flush with it. They sit and absorb the feeling in silence for a few seconds, each in their own inner space, the need for eye contact replaced by the much more visceral presence of body contact. Steve can feel Tony's quick heartbeat against his ribs, like a higher counterpoint to the pulse of the music still filling the air. He can smell metal and soap and the warm-body skin and hair scents that aren't apparent before being this close to a person. He feels like he needs to check and recheck this reality, thinks he could sit here all day absorbing the radiant warmth and vitality flowing into him through this simple yet revelatory contact.

The tenor of the moment, while not broken, shifts when Tony brings his arm forward between them to proffer the multitool. He makes a neat little rotation that, one-handed, none of the crude hold-and-pull unfolding required for a normal pocketknife, lets him extend a small blade, and, grip first, pushes the tool toward Steve. "Here, open it up."  

Gladness bubbles and balloons inside Steve, crisp and fresh like the scent of spring cleaning  carried on a breeze. This is the confounding contradiction of Tony, who leaps headlong into test flights with untried experimental machinery, but then staunchly follows simple tool-safety practices. Steve accepts the knife, their hands brushing in a bare whisper of contact that slivers through him far too keenly for the brevity of the touch. Regretting the need to draw his other arm back from around Tony in order to do so, he holds the box in place and splits the packing tape running over the top with one neat slice of the sharp little blade. Then he safely passes the tool back to Tony, who reverses the one-handed motion to slide the blade away again before angling his hips up to tuck it back into his pocket.

When Steve pulls the box flaps open, Tony tenses against him, not outright retreating, but seeming to brace for it. At first, Steve thinks Tony has misunderstood the withdrawing of his arm as a pulling away. But then the what, if not the why, becomes apparent when Steve sees what's inside. He looks at the contents, then at Tony, with a confusing sense of deja-vu. "Isn't this my order? Did it get sent twice?" He flounders for an explanation.

"I. Um. Yes?" Now Tony's stuttering and stammering almost as badly as Steve had the other day in the workshop. "I got another order. Of everything you did."

Something's off here, a flicker of uneasiness coiling through Steve, leaving each of them wound up a couple of turns, both their eyes downcast toward hands and bottles. "I thought it was private."

"It was,” Tony hastens to attest. “I didn't see anything you did online.  Swear it. I just... well, I asked JARVIS to order me a copy of whatever you picked out. And still had to convince him that wasn't the same as spying."

"But why? Why did you do that?"

"I... quality control? I figured I'd better make sure you only got the good stuff?" Tony laughs, forced and brittle. "Well, that was my excuse anyway. But really just... curiosity.  It was hot. Even though I wasn't going to see you using any of it, well, didn't think I was, if I still am... but it was hot just thinking about it, thinking I'd know what you were using."

Steve unclenches gradually, breathing easier as Tony explains. It's an honest answer; one he can accept. It's not like he'd been completely forthright himself, making a pretense for opening a dialog on a sexual topic, then playing along with the ignorance of using lube, in hopes of revealing whether his interest in Tony could be mutual.

Tentatively, he circles his arm behind Tony again, brushing it along his back and resting his fingers on Tony's forearm. He's relieved when he feels Tony relax and subtly lean into him once again, accepting the renewal of the embrace. And maybe it's an illusion, but it seems like the added degree of touch can only make it easier to talk about this, to feel their words and tones of voice reinforced by the unconscious body cues. But with or without an active contribution to their communication, he readily acknowledges to himself that he's just happier holding Tony once more.

"I'll admit... it was a turn-on for me too. I was thinking about you a lot, when I was, you know, using some of these," Steve says, lowly.

He can barely believe he's sitting here with Tony lightly cuddled against him, telling Tony he thought about him while taking care of himself. Telling him he got even more turned on thinking about him while getting himself off. It's a repeating reality check in his mind again, made all the more unbelievable by the fact that he's saying such things without wanting to die of humiliation. But the embarrassment of trying to force out some of those words in Tony's workshop, knowing he was speaking not-entirely in good faith, and not at all certain of his reception, is nothing compared to the ember of arousal beginning to heat up within him, not yet urgent, but a warm, liquid light washing through him all the same.

Inching his hand up Tony's arm to the bend of his elbow and a little beyond, he sneaks his fingertips up to trace the smooth skin and firm muscle under the edge of his t-shirt sleeve, and feels Tony flex a little in instinctual response.

Tony slides his right arm back from where it rests between them, allowing him the reach to lay his hand on Steve's back, his palm resting lightly, and fingers spacing over the notches of Steve's spine. "I'll call you that and raise you," Tony says, maybe meaning the new increment of touch; maybe meaning what he's about to say; probably both. "I was gonna have to jerk off so many times after that conversation, that I had JARVIS order the entire stock anyone had of my favorite lube."

The last piece of the mystery falls into place for Steve. "So that's why it was sold out everywhere and I couldn't get any!" He lifts his hand from Tony’s arm in an open-palmed gesture, and Tony actually looks over at the separation. It's only for a moment, but when Steve returns his hand to Tony's arm, it's higher, up at his shoulder, rubbing his thumb gently along the inside of Tony's shoulder blade.

Two simultaneous reactions confuse Tony’s vocal response into an odd contorted sound. He curls inward a little more toward Steve, a quiet hum at the soft massaging lurching into a laugh at his exclamation. It starts out sounding a little rusty, but opens up to a clean and clear peal, as Tony lets go of the remaining traces of the strain he's been holding, seeming relieved of the worry that Steve would push him away at these admissions.

“...which you wouldn't even have been looking for if _someone_ hadn't said I'd told you to try it!"

Steve’s thumb continues to play around the perimeter of Tony’s bones. "That's true. Although thinking back, he didn't ever actually say _you_ had told him to tell me--just that he thought I ought to take a look at that one."

"Let it never be said that JARVIS has no initiative,” Tony says drily. “You're still in so much trouble, J," he calls out, but JARVIS, knowing the conversation isn't really about him, maintains radio silence, doing no more than flash a couple of lights on a wall panel to acknowledge.

Steve's not sure if Tony's aware or not that he's started kneading his fingertips into Steve's back, but he himself definitely is, the heated, shifting points of pressure permeating down though the depths of his muscles like water seeping into parched soil. Tony makes a couple of quiet, inarticulate sounds, first of protest, and then of pleasure, as Steve briefly leans away to set the box of lube bottles on the floor next to the bed, then starts mirroring Tony’s actions, deepening the kneading motion of his hand at Tony's shoulder. Tony’s left hand has been resting on his own thigh, and Steve reaches to take hold of it in his now-free right. He glances up at him in an unspoken seeking of permission, finding it in Tony’s warm brown eyes, and feeling it confirmed by the return squeeze of his hand.

"He’s probably in more trouble than that,” Steve posits. “You know I told you I found a sample?"

A knowing look crosses Tony's face. "Yep, and I know where it came from." His eyes dart to the nightstand.

From a couple of Tony’s earlier comments, Steve had already been fairly sure that the theft had not gone undiscovered. But since Tony doesn't seem upset about it, he shrugs mentally and spells it out. "Right. So after JARVIS told me to get the stuff you'd just told him to buy out, he sent me to where he knew I could get some."

"And you just went along with it! Truth, justice, and lube-rty for all!"

"Tony, oh my God..." Steve barely manages to utter, before they both break into an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. By the time the laughter subsides, they're leaning into one another, catching their breaths, each with an arm still wrapped around the other, and free hands clasped between them. Tony's burrowed his head into the crook of Steve's neck, relaxing into the pad of muscle under his cheek.

Steve raises his hand to stroke down the back of Tony’s head, tucking him in a little closer, soft hair feathering through his fingers. The same feathery feeling whispers across his heart, tender and poignant. His voice is rough when he speaks again.

"He said you wouldn't even notice."  

A little muffled in terms of actual sound produced, Tony’s speech is all the more immediate on another level, for speaking into Steve’s neck as he is.

"I almost didn't. Except last night I was going to uh, use it, and I knew I'd had an open bottle, but all that was in there was the full one. If you'd taken the full one, I probably wouldn't have noticed it was missing.” He asks the last remaining open question. “Why’d you take the open one, anyway?"  

Tony knows what he'd hypothesized, but while they’re coming clean to each other, he wants to hear it from Steve. Questioning, he looks up through his lashes, and sees Steve looking down at him with an expression of fondness, infused with an undertone of something more complicated. There's a lot of emotion showing, even if he's not sure what to call it. It makes Tony nuzzle his face back into Steve's neck, and Tony can feel Steve's soft murmur of appreciation, sounding much deeper for having his ear near Steve's chest.  

He feels alert, but at the same time, lulled by the breath and heartbeat, the strong body wrapped around him. It's an un-urgent affection he's not accustomed to, and it's delicious, feeding a starvation he hadn't even been conscious of, even as a tendril of arousal begins to curl in his belly. He scoots closer into Steve, and Steve's body vibrates against him with a longer hum of approval. Steve finally looses their clasped hands, tugging his fingers from between Tony's, to wrap both arms around him, and Tony follows suit. Still seated next to each other, they can’t hug fully flush, but the greater portions of their chests press together, trapping the heat of two layers of skin-warmed cotton with the give and take and rise and fall of breaths, the flat of the arc reactor against the curves of Steve's pectorals.

It's like they're existing in two planes at once, their ongoing conversation, the commonplace exchange of words, made almost surreal against the trancelike state of their bodies learning the shapes of one another.

"JARVIS did say I should take the sealed one,” Steve says, confirming Tony’s earlier suspicions.  “But I… even with JARVIS sending me as kind of a prank, that wasn't the same as your permission to take it. The whole thing was exciting, but I still felt a little guilty. More admissions here though, it was still a pretty big turn-on, sneaking into your room to steal something personal."

"Something sssexxxual." Tony indulges in that 's', luxuriates in that 'x,' stretches the word itself into all the decadence of a sinful pleasure.

Steve finds his voice deepening, responding to and echoing Tony's tone. "Yeah. Sexual... Ok, look, I took the open one because it was completely hot to think about you touching yourself with the stuff from the same bottle."

"Dirty. The good kind of dirty," Tony declares, practically mouthing the words into Steve's neck, his hands on Steve's back spread wide, and still restlessly kneading with increasing pressure.

"Yeah." Steve groans, breathless, and he's feeling his groin start to stir at being made the topic of conversation. He sweeps one hand down Tony's back in a long, firm stroke from shoulder to hip, Tony's spine giving in to a deeper curve, crowding him against Steve.

Tony's voice has taken on a hoarse, husky character. "I'm pretty sure he told you to steal my lube as revenge for me arguing him into copying your order."

"Sounds like JARVIS knew what was up. Ah--" Steve catches himself.

"That sounds about right," Tony steps in. There's that unintended innuendo again, and he sees no cause to allow a correction.

"I mean, it sounds like he knew we both... like each other, and wanted to help get us together."

Their hands are wandering freely across each other's shoulders and backs in a freeform mutual massage, bodies shifting together in subtle motion, voices giving breath to small sounds of pleasure between their words and sentences.  

"I do like you," Tony affirms. “I'm also totally hot for you. And I definitely want us to get together.”

"Me too, Tony. Ok, listen, I'll admit to one more thing. I said I didn't use your lube, and that's true. But thinking about using the same bottle you did... while I was, you know..."

Tony taps fingertips twice on his back. "C'mon Steve, iIf we're gonna do it, how can you not at least be able to say it?"

"While I was... jerking off, are you happy?"

“All happy here.” Tony's happy, and Tony's dick is happy, enough so to give a twitch in his jeans at hearing Steve finally resort to the locker-room term, and at the hint of twang that surfaces as his language becomes less refined.

"I was jerking off with lube you suggested I buy, while I thought about using the stuff from the same bottle you'd touched yourself with. And it got me off harder than anything else."

Tony's been leaning closer and closer against him, breathing harder too, in damp puffs against Steve's neck and the collar of his t-shirt. They're both ratcheted up, talking themselves into a higher state of arousal, warmth and comfort heating into something thicker and heavier.

"That is so hot. Oh my God. We are so using that bottle later. Or forget later, maybe sooner."

"Yeah, I want to do that together.”

"Ok, it's confirmed on the list. But I have to ask you something else. For real. You really never used lube to masturbate before?"

Steve squirms with self-conscious laughter. "Ahahaha, no. I mean, no, I have, not no, I haven't."

“I knew it! LIAR!” Tony gives him a harder poke in the back, straightening in Steve’s hold, and glaring.

The look of consternation on Steve’s face at being called out is priceless. "I didn't lie! I just... what did you say before? Went along with it!"

"Sure, right, of course,” Tony placates, artlessly, amiably skeptical.

"I'm telling you, the chafing is real! I never thought of looking for any, uh, modern developments since I've been here, and all I ever used is what we had in my day, which was nothing like any of this new stuff.”

Tony looks at him askance. “What, exactly, did you have, in your day?”

“Ah, pretty much three choices, you know, we had petroleum jelly, we had KY, and then sometimes hand lotion, which, uh, well it felt great, but always either smelled like flowers or medicine."

Tony groans. "Vaseline, Intensive Care, or K Why? No wonder the chafing. Good thing you have me now, to introduce you to better living through chemistry, Capsicum."

"Tony, ugghhhh," Steve shudders, and not from enjoyment, his wandering hands balling up against Tony’s back. "Whatever you do, please promise not to call me something like that in the heat of the moment."

“Oookay, Cap. Steve. No name-calling. But I promise I'll be calling out your name!"

Steve’s at least half-hard now, thoughts of the mood-killing nickname clearing away with all due haste in favor of imagining Tony calling his name loudly and ecstatically as he’s overtaken in orgasm. Without consciously deciding upon the action, he surrenders to his desire for more contact. Slipping his hand under the hem of Tony's t-shirt, he flattens his palm against skin slightly cooler and incomparably softer than the cotton, the shift and flex of Tony's body becoming strikingly more immediate without even such a slight barrier.

Tony trembles under his hands and writhes, practically flinging himself at Steve, throwing a leg over to straddle his lap. Startled but thrilled, and greedy for more of Tony, Steve adds his other hand up and under the shirt, and Tony releases his hold around Steve to reach his arms up. "Off, off," he chants.

Message loud and clear, Steve sweeps his hands upward, pulling Tony's shirt up and along, and tugging it off over his head. He tosses it away without even aiming for the laundry pile, indiscriminately adding to the accumulation on the floor. His eyes, dark with lust, never leave Tony, feasting on the lines of his torso at full extension as Tony displays himself, arching back in a sinuous curve that runs from his hips through the line of his arms, still stretched over his head. His hair is newly mussed, and a few goosebumps dot his arms, not because it's cold, but the reaction of skin newly exposed to air, and the exhilaration of being bared to Steve's voracious gaze.  
  
Tony's solid and fit, scarred and aglow. He lets his arms fall to tangle around Steve's neck, settling down with a knee firmly on each side against his hips. They're nearly eye to eye of a height in this position--and they're also equally met at the waist, Steve's half-hardness springing to full at the press of Tony's answering arousal evident through both their jeans.  

Steve reminds himself to breathe, doesn't know what to do with his hands. He finally drops them to rest at Tony's hips, sliding fingers through the belt loops. Tony shivers minutely at the gently possessive grip, and regards Steve intently, a petitioner awaiting the passing of judgment.

He doesn’t think Steve to be superficial, but he knows what he looks like, with the metal and the scars.

Steve's an artist and a soldier; not a promiscuous man, but neither is he chaste. He’s looked upon bodies; he’s studied them without passion; he’s entwined with them in radiant vitality. He’s seen modesty fall to casual nudity in shared quarters, and men fallen to the naked horrors of war, reduced to tattered, empty husks desecrated by violent death.

But he's never been so enthralled by a body as he is right now, the curves of Tony's biceps and shoulders, the stretch of his chest, the arch of his ribs, the hollowing and filling of his abdomen as he breathes, deep, yet still a little quicker and shallower than anyone else not sustained by that exquisite, intrusive, embedded cylinder of metal and light.

It can't be more than a few breaths, but it feels like time has slowed to an expanding fourth dimension spinning out around them. Still trailing fingers softly up and down the back of Steve's neck, the hollow at the base of his skull, the hairs at his nape, Tony claims these vulnerable parts in return for leaving his own so defenseless, watching and waiting so patiently, so expectantly.

A wave of arousal crashes over Steve like a tsunami, and he's suddenly wholly back in his body. His every hair is on end, the delicacy of Tony's stroking fingers sending little filaments of silver threading through him. He's desperately aware of his erection trapped and distending the cloth confining it, and the corresponding pressure searing into his groin from Tony's doing the same.

Yet the flood of desire carries with it an outpouring of devotion, the yearning to defend and protect, to care for Tony physically or emotionally, in any way he can't or won't for himself. Overcome, he slips one hand free of the waistband and brings it to Tony’s cheek, the closely trimmed beard hairs coarse but smooth against his palm. He’s dizzied in a rush by Tony's sharp release of breath, the unhesitating tilt of his face into Steve's hand, his sweet smile and the softening of his eyes, like he’s just been granted the long dreamt-of pardon that sets him free.

Steve slides his hand to the back of Tony's head, tangling his fingers through his hair and drawing him in. He lets Tony choose which side to lean to as their faces come close, till they're pressed cheek to cheek, Tony's facial hair a line of texture against his own smoother skin, Tony's scent wafting up from his body into Steve's nostrils, their humid chuffs of breath falling in and out of sync. Steve may not feel the strain of physical effort until he's performed incredible feats, but that doesn't mean his heart doesn't beat harder, his breath come faster, when his emotions are exerting their pull. Elation curls through him, liquid and languid and electrifying all in one, leaving him reeling.

Tony breaks the silence with a whisper against his cheek. "So what made you come tell me about the chafing?"

The question is unexpected, and Steve so immersed in emotion and sensuality that he goes blank for a beat before the meaning registers. When he pulls himself back, he speaks quietly in return. "That's what you want to ask me, now, when we're..." He nudges his hips up against Tony, making them both moan.

"Mmm, can't really think of a better time to finish the story," Tony replies, after they've both taken a few seconds to recover.

"Ok. If you really want to know. I, honestly, I've liked you... been interested in you, for a while. I thought you might be too, but I wasn't sure how to ask. So I thought, maybe if I could talk to you about a sexual subject--"

Tony interrupts, tugging gently on a strand of Steve's short hair. "Cap, you said 'sexual' without stuttering or blushing!"

"You can't see my face, you don't know if I'm blushing," Steve gripes.

"Yeah, but I can feel you. I'd have felt if your face got hotter--"  

Another surge of affection sweeps through Steve. The press of cheeks is their most innocent point of contact, but he’s struck by the novelty that Tony could never have made this exact argument before, when ‘face-to-face’ has only just now come to mean touch instead of sight.

"--as if anything about you could even get any hotter. Wait, _now_ you’re blushing, wow, I really can feel it!"

Judging by Tony’s excitement, he’s half-surprised to find his half-joking little quip proven true.

"Shut up and let me finish, since you’re the one who asked," Steve growls playfully, and picks up where he left off before Tony can inject anything further. "I was saying, if I got you talking about something sexual, maybe I could tell from how you reacted whether there was any chance you might be interested too. And then when you told me to go shopping for lube, it gave me the perfect opening to, uh, ask for a hand. Even if JARVIS hadn't, you know, also taken matters into his own hands, not that he has hands, but you know what I'm saying."

"Sneaky tactics, soldier," Tony says lazily.  He's indolent against Steve, slouched with his chin hooked over Steve's shoulder, his own hands inert for the time being. The driving urgency has receded with their light-hearted bickering, though they’re neither of them any less turned on. Steve can’t stop his hands from drifting over Tony's bare back, outlining the bounds of his shoulder blades and thumbing beneath them, fingering the grooves of his spine, skating his palms down Tony’s sides and dragging them back up again. This freedom to explore such an expanse of Tony's body is stunning to him, as is the distinction of Tony's every response, from the small twitches of his muscles to the hitches in his breath, and the tiny incoherent sounds he makes between words when Steve hits a sensitive spot. Which seems to be often, and he loves it.

A tremor rolls through Tony's shoulders. "Nnn, feels good, your _hands_..." he trails off, taking a deep breath before continuing on the huffed exhale. "Whell, even if you knew about lube, and didn't know you might actually find out about something better, it still took a lot of balls to use a dick problem as a conversation starter--” He’s still riding that same riff, but it’s blithe and breezy, no longer weighting the words for shock value. “--considering, I’ve been just as hot for you, and I never managed to come up with a way, ok, frankly, never worked up the nerve, to ask either. So thank you for trusting me with that."

"It was pretty embarrassing,” Steve affirms. “More because I was afraid I was being too obvious than from talking about the chafing or the lube. But none of that made it any easier. And Tony, some of the things you were saying!"

Tony shakes with laughter against him, a warm, unevenly quaking arm-and-lapful.  "Not gonna apologize for that. All part of the package deal with me. Having buyer's remorse already?"

Even though he's never been intimate with Tony on this level before now, Steve knows that this kind of question, no matter what smile or laugh accompanies it, represents an underlying insecurity that Tony will probably always need filled. "Not at all. I'm thinking I got a pretty great deal. Happy to make installments for as long as it takes."

He feels Tony still, and then he's pulling back a little against Steve's arms, just enough to sit up and face him, arms still draping over Steve's shoulders, wearing that intent, searching expression again. "And how ‘bout now, Steve, are you feeling embarrassed about what you're doing?"

Steve shakes his head firmly, matching Tony’s solemnity. One part of him is bemused by how quickly the mood between them roller-coasters between silly and sober, but at the same time, he likes that they can lighten a serious moment with humor, or let a wisecrack warrant a thoughtful response. Replying to this question, though, he feels no wish to deflect or dilute the intensity. "What _we’re_ doing. I'm not embarrassed at all," he says quietly, almost back to a whisper. "You feel so good. I feel so good being close to you."

Tony breathes out a deep sigh, another of those full-body shudders rocking through him.  "Me too. I second all of that. Can I... do you want to be even closer?" He pulls his arms back toward himself till his hands rest on Steve's shoulders, then slides them up to cup his face, thumbs resting along Steve's jaw. The flash of an impish grin is the only tip-off before he suddenly darts in, quick as a cat, and catches Steve entirely off guard with a swift peck on the mouth. Steve parts his lips in surprise, wondering for a moment if Tony's going to kiss him properly, or if it’s an invitation and he’s waiting for Steve to RSVP. But Tony moves on, his face light, and his hands skimming loosely back down to Steve’s shoulders, his chest, and gently taking hold of the bottom of Steve's t-shirt, crinkling the cloth between his fingers.

As tight as Steve wears his shirts, when Tony grips the hem, the backs of his fingers also graze against the skin low on Steve’s belly. His abs tighten, the breath slipping soundlessly from his open mouth, and his hunger renews itself in a dazzling flare that races outward from the point of contact. He sees Tony’s eyes darken, gratified that his responses are as affecting to Tony as Tony’s are to him.

It's another of those syrupy, time-slowing moments, and Steve eases them out of it, offering what they both want in vowels and consonants cemented with coarse gravel. “Help me take this off?"

Tony nods, and Steve reaches down to add his hold to Tony’s at the hem of the shirt. Together, they slowly lift it, Steve letting go as it hits under his arms, which he raises. The material bunches in Tony's hands and he rises onto his knees over Steve's lap to hike the shirt up past Steve's chest and over his head. Pulling his arms down through the sleeves as he feels it clear his head, Steve opens his eyes just in time to see Tony drop the shirt off the edge of the bed, staring at him with eyes so luminous and full of want that it takes his breath away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, yes, that _is_ a multitool in Tony's pocket, and he is, indeed, happy to see Steve!


	5. Moment at Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continues directly from the end of Chapter 4.
> 
> The E rating applies to this chapter.
> 
> Trigger Warning: At one point, a character briefly feels like he's going to have a panic attack. However, the source of the anxiety is resolved within a few seconds, and the panic attack does not happen.

Tony's staring and he knows it, laser focused on Steve. He's seen Steve shirtless before, but there's a pronounced difference between incidental view and the invitation to look his fill; to look with intent, and with the promise of its fulfillment.

He's staggered. Steve's torso looks even bigger now freed of the undersized t-shirt, miles of smooth, pale skin and powerful muscles, all on offer, right here in immediate reach.

But this, anything even approaching it, has been a flight of fancy, an abstract, for so long that it's become a well-trained habit to keep his mind from wandering too far, and his hands to himself.

Here at the point in the encounter where, in the past, he’d have been barreling headfirst into his partner's body like a freight train with faulty brakes, Tony's hyperactive mind derails itself, his hands and tongue tied by an invisible bond. Distracted, the strain of the position he's been holding for a while filters into awareness, and it’s this which finally bestirs him to break the paralysis.

He unslings his leg from across Steve's lap, folding onto his heels at Steve’s side, then swinging his legs out in front of him. "Ugh, sorry, knees getting sore," he explains, rubbing at one of them briefly, but before Steve can muster an appropriate response, Tony’s in action again. Scooting a couple of feet up the bed, he stretches out onto his side, propped up on one elbow, and beckons, hoping to recapture the mood.

To this, Steve reacts. Twisting his body, he drops his hands to the mattress and brings up a knee, then pushes off of both to propel himself toward Tony, who can only watch and thoroughly appreciate the play of muscle and the grace of this motion. The move would be inspiring fantasies, if the reality weren't right here, leaning into the circle of Tony's outstretched left arm, Steve sliding his own underneath Tony.

This first contact of their bare upper bodies is a revelation, shockingly hot and vibrant. Tony's frame of reference inverts like an afterimage in blues and purples, and everything's back on track. Suddenly the only desire he can encompass is how badly he wants to touch, to get his hands, his mouth, everything, all over this man, his friend and teammate whom he’d never expected to have in his arms.

"Tony, Tony..." 

Steve's reciting his name like a mantra, holding him impossibly close, flush together on their sides, and Tony's distantly aware of his own voice babbling, "Oh, God, Steve, I wanna feel you everywhere, get those hands of yours all over me, I wanna eat you alive!”

All their restraint has come unpinned. Their legs tangle, Tony throwing his left over Steve's thigh to snug it between both of his, and rolling their hips together. They're both fully hard, erections crowding insistently against the confines of their jeans, obvious even behind the layers of flies and zippers, the folds of denim gathered in the creases of their groins.

"I've got you, Tony, I've got you," Steve soothes through the cracks in his voice, even as his roving hands inflame. They feel like they're covering Tony's entire torso at once, drawing bursts of fire across his back, his shoulders and neck, into his hair, over the soft skin at the sides of his ribs that’s open and unprotected where Tony has his own arms raised to wrap around Steve.

With a pull of his weight, Steve rolls them so his back's flat on the bed, carrying Tony into a loose sprawl over him. They resettle into the new position, their calls and cries muting to low rumbles. The sound itself becomes a tangible force, vibrations resonating between their coupled bodies, their two voices harmonizing into one complex sonority.

Bracing on one arm, Tony takes his first handful of Steve's sculpted flesh, palm shaping to the roundness of his pectoral, squeezing and then dragging downward.  The muscles under his hand quiver and twitch, while Steve's fingers convulsively clutch and loosen on his back. 

Although he's the one leaning over Steve, Tony feels surrounded by him, enfolded in the greater breadth and strength of his larger body, like resting atop a perfectly sun-drenched boulder, absorbing the heat baking into him from both stone and sky.

He lowers his head to Steve's collarbone, mouthing his way up, not quite sucking, but gripping and releasing with his lips, leaving traces of moisture on sleek skin. He continues his path up Steve's neck, the big tendon, the wildly thudding pulse point, the corner of his jaw.

"Mmm, Tony, ahhhh..." Steve breathes out an ongoing chain of vocalizations, quiet but unmistakable, and Tony loves hearing them, loves inciting them. Even otherwise occupied as he is, he contributes the sucking sounds of mouth on skin, and makes no effort to stifle his own throaty breaths to silence.

Pressing upward, he reaches for Steve's mouth with his own, feels Steve curve his neck down to meet him. He bumps his lips against Steve's chin, his cheek, an awkward crossing of noses, then tastes Steve's hot breath in the moment before their lips meet. Their kisses are light at first; short nibbles and sips. He tests the firmness of Steve's lips, giving a gentle tug to the full bottom one, then the thinner top one; he nuzzles at the corner of his mouth, returns to suckle at his bottom lip again, then leans to nibble at the further corner.

Steve parts his lips under Tony's, and they kiss more fully, soft dryness of lips giving way to quick, darting touches of their tongues, leading them into wetter, deeper, open-mouthed explorations. Tony relishes the pressure as Steve thrusts a hand up to thread fingers into his hair, wide palm wrapping the back of his neck and pulling their delving mouths closer. Their tongues twist together, rough and smooth sides meeting and sweeping through each others' mouths.

"God, Steve, fuck," the words pour forth thickly, half-garbled around and between slick, luxurious mouthfuls of Steve's tongue. Steve's mouth is open wide, reaching in and feeding him, Tony's panting and Steve's answering groans punctuated by the salacious smacks and clicks of their mutual consumption.

Clinging and writhing amidst the twisted bedcovers, they spur each other upward into a frenetic, hot grappling of bodies. They trade positions of their limbs like a hand-swap pile, reaching under and over, exchanging one expanse of sweat-sheened skin for another. Their mouths meet and part, breaking for teeth and tongues to range afield. Tony arches, and Steve ducks his head to teethe at his collarbone, each sharp nip sending a bolt of heat coursing through Tony's center to land between his legs. He drags Steve's head back up for their mouths to rejoin and sunder once more, a give and take, faces close and necks twining together. 

They’re conjoined in an unabashed full-body clinch, legs interlocked, and the press of their jeans-covered erections a sweet sting, like salt mixed into the sugar. But thus far, they’ve kept their roaming hands above the waist. It’s Steve who finally breeches that unspoken boundary on the next long downward slide of his hands, pausing briefly at the small of Tony's back, then extending his reach down lower to collect Tony’s ass into a double-palmed grip. He hitches him up, rolls atop him, and grinds their lower bodies together, driving them into an even more frantic escalation of urgency.

Wailing, Tony opens his legs to lock them around Steve's hips, stretching his head up and latching his mouth to Steve's throat in blind desperation. He sucks again and again at the spot, raising the hot blood to the surface to leave his mark.

If he had felt surrounded and consumed by Steve before, he's utterly devoured by him now.

Up to this point, Tony had been taking a little more initiative, but now Steve seems to have decided that it's his turn to set the pace, and to lavish his attentions upon Tony's willing, wanting body. Never one for passivity, Tony boldly meets Steve's new advances, hugging his thighs around Steve's to goad and torment them both with the maddening rub of their hard cocks. 

Just the sight of a lust-driven Steve propped over him is awe-inspiring unto itself. Steve's hair is sweat-damp and tousled, his face flushed and eyes blown wide, his arms taut with prominent veins as he holds himself up with a hand flat just above each of Tony's shoulders. Tony runs his palms up the outsides of Steve’s unyielding arms, thumbing appreciatively up his biceps and curving over the rounds of his shoulders to settle over the heavy ridges of his trapezius. Steve seems to take it as a request, giving Tony an enticing closeup view of those biceps flexing and bulging inches in front of his face, as he smoothly lowers himself to cover Tony’s mouth with his.  Tony pulls Steve’s head down to meet him, while Steve hovers, locked halfway through the descending portion of a pushup like he could hold the strength position all day long.

This kiss is hard, possessive and demanding, a prelude to Steve’s reconnaissance of Tony’s body that leaves Tony riled and restless, his nerves zinging like live wires from head to toe.

Steve slips out from between Tony's legs, breaking the direct contact of their groins, and rolls partway to the side to rest over him on one bent forearm. Bucking his hips up to seek the departing friction, Tony whines in protest, but Steve's body blankets him, restraining the movement from going very far.  The hot, heavy press of Steve’s weight on him is security fraught with a hint of danger, a thrill ride in the instant before freefall. 

Poised at this height, they hang suspended.

Leaning down, Steve rubs his cheek against Tony’s shoulder, then lifts his head, fixing his gaze back upon his face. He watches intently as he reaches out to splay his hand over Tony’s lightly muscled stomach, slow and telegraphed, but Tony's quick intake of breath is involuntary all the same. 

Steve's hand is so hot against Tony’s already burning skin, the touch sizzling as though he'll see its imprint branded across him when it's lifted. His breath comes quick and shallow through parted lips, his heart trip-hammering in anticipation of where the touch will go next. With agonizing slowness, Steve crawls his hand up Tony's abdomen, shivery streaks just shy of tickling skittering along the path in its wake. With the backs of his fingers, he traces the arching inner curve of Tony’s ribcage, and brings his thumb to rest lightly over the delicate, vulnerable hollow of his solar plexus. Tony feels like Steve's touching his beating heart, pounding so close here below bone and skin, and echoing in own his ears the louder as he finds himself holding his breath.

He knows where this is going. No matter his trust in Steve, this is something that must be addressed between them. The arc reactor entrenched in his chest sets Tony's body apart from any other, and since his remaking around it, his options the few times he’s been with a bed partner have been to conceal and share less than all of himself, or to entrust a lover with the key to his mechanical heart. For the first time ever, he’s in bed with someone who means enough for him to choose the latter. If he's going to be with Steve, he's going to be with him fully, nothing in him willing to impugn the man's integrity with half-measures. He holds Steve's eyes, letting show as much of this commitment as his face can convey. 

Steve smooths his hand up and to the side of Tony's chest, sensation phasing weirdly in and out, from live and present, to oddly distant, as he brushes over the dead spots of the outlying scars. Tony’s tested the range of his own damaged flesh, but under the hand of another, the loss of continuity, the instants when he registers no perception at all of either side of the contact, make the points of complete dropout all the more alien and unsettling.

The uneasiness intensifies into slabs of tension crushing down on Tony’s shoulders, needles of ice pricking at his skin. The waiting becomes unbearable, far more nerve-wracking than the thing itself will be. He knows this, but he’s dizzy with anxiety, his head spinning, and maybe if he could breathe past the wall bricking up his throat--

Steve lifts his hand and lowers it over the polished glass of the reactor, and it's done. The floodgate opens. Tony's safe; he's at peace. The breath slips out of him and washes back in like a gentle tide. He closes his eyes and reaches to lay a hand over Steve's, savoring a shattering intimacy that from anyone else, would be an invasion. He’s alight with joy, radiant, shining, an outline in neon infusing the space within to cast his entire shape aglow.

"Tony?" Steve whispers, the import not escaping him.

"Hmm?"

"Is this ok?"  

Hushed and tremulous, their words tumble over one another.

"Yeah, it's ok. It's great. I, I don't let anyone--"

"I know. I never thought--"

"--but you," Tony finishes.

The thought crystallizes, leaving him suffused with wonder that for all his experience, he'd still had a first time to share, and he'd just given it to Steve.  

"Tony... this is... I'm honored."

He traces the fingertips of his free hand so tenderly down Tony's face from temple to jaw, Tony turning his head in time to catch them with a little kiss before they fall away.  Eyes bright and clear, Steve smiles down at him, and Tony drinks in the unfettered adoration. It warms its way down, sweet and dark like honeyed whiskey. 

And then it sours.

Unbidden, unruly warnings arise to mutter and foment unrest in his mind. ‘ _ He can't really feel this way about you, he'll learn you're not worth it, it’s not  _ if _ he’ll leave you, it’s  _ when _ , _ ’ they echo and reverberate, but Tony banishes the ugly thoughts, heartset on basking in the way Steve makes him feel so cherished, and even more miraculously, makes him believe he deserves it.

This newly born connection between them is profound, powered by something far more primitive than the lightyears-ahead technology their hands are enclosing. It's so foreign for Tony to feel emotions like this in bed. He never has, not back in those years when he used to have people in and out of his bed nightly, nor on the few occasions from his more recent past when loneliness and skin-hunger have temporarily overridden his self-containment.

In those earlier days, his exploits had been lust, rebellion, proof that he could get inside anyone he wanted, and that he could control the one way he let anyone inside himself. The title of ‘playboy’ is one that still sees him decorated up one side and denounced down the other, but in reality, one he’s long since abjured. 

Flawed logic had led to a false proof. But this is a breakthrough, the solving of what had seemed for so long an impossible equation. All it took was discovering Steve to be his missing constant, and now the solutions graph in swooping curves of sweetness and joy. He's never had these as bed companions before, but glutting himself upon them is the only kind of orgy in which his present self holds any interest.

And interested he is, even if his erection has waned in the turbulence of the last several minutes.  He suspects it won't take much to revive it, now that they’ve forded this crossing. He wriggles under Steve’s steadying hand, a body at a surfeit of rest ready to rise, lacking only a fresh impulse to transfer the inertia.

“Hey, soldier, plenty more territory to plant your flag, if you’re ready to keep marching on,” Tony ventures, with a coy, slow bat of his lashes.

"That's good, ‘cause I was hoping not to stop. This campaign’s far from over." Steve's words are curved with the same quirk that lifts the corners of his mouth. He makes good on it and sets them in motion again, carefully extricating his hand from under Tony's, and lifting it to press his lips to the back. He gives a soft squeeze before relinquishing his grip. Tony returns the handclasp in kind, and when Steve's fingers slip away, tucks his hand under the back of his head, offering himself at Steve's disposal.

Steve presses reverent fingertips to the glass face of the arc reactor, then traces around the metal rim and the skin and scars surrounding it. He stays close to Tony's center at first, then deviates into less predictable patterns, resuming his interrupted mapping of Tony's body with a litany of inquisitive touches.

Tony's captivated by the way Steve not only touches different parts of him, but learns what he feels like with different parts of himself. He explores with his fingertips, his knuckles, his flat palm, turns it over to rub with the back of his hand, sometimes letting his whole forearm follow in sweeping lines over Tony's flesh. Slipping his other arm out from under himself to curve loosely above Tony's head, Steve lays his cheek on Tony's chest, mouthing at him and brushing him with the tip of his nose. He turns his face inward, draws a deep inhalation of Tony's clean skin and sweat, his exhales becoming yet one more form of contact stirring Tony's skin. To Tony, it all feels wonderful, lazily arousing, with the underlying promise of banked flames willing to be fanned back into a roaring blaze.

Tony encourages Steve with the hitches of his breath, the whimpers in his throat, urges him with a hand tucked up into Steve’s hair, fingers combing through and scratching along his scalp, down the back of his neck, and across his shoulders. Move and countermove, their touches become firmer, more provocative. Steve's on him and over him, big hands roaming, playing on him like an instrument, plucking his strings and striking all his key notes. The more Tony reacts, the more intensity Steve brings in turn, finding the teasing caresses that make him quaver and moan. He shifts restlessly, his peaceful relaxation winding into a glissando of bright, sparkling tones trilling up his spine and down his extremities.

Steve circles his fingertips around Tony's nipple, and then rubs a thumb over it.

"Ahh!" Tony starts and gasps out a thin cry. Steve thumbs his nipple again, the stab of icy heat through that small point pulling a concentrated flash through his belly and straight to his cock. It leaps back to full hardness, the stimulation doubling as the head pushes roughly across the inside of the fabric entrapping it.

Legs still weighted under Steve's, Tony jerks his hips and twists his torso, flings his outside arm over Steve's shoulders so he's clinging onto him, holding his upper body a few inches off the bed. He's got no clear intention of whether he's trying to pull Steve down to him, or push him over, just blindsided by a sudden, ravening hunger for every kind of intensity, closer, deeper, faster, harder,  _ more _ .

Steve is caught off guard, but he absorbs Tony's weight, closing his arms around him and rolling with it. A combination of instinct and intention lands him half-reclined on his elbows against a pile of pillows up near the headboard, Tony atop him once more.

Tony gives him no chance to recover, unleashing his limbs in a tumultuous flurry of motion. All Steve can do is try to keep up, his hands playing a game of catch and release, skating over Tony’s darting and weaving head and shoulders and latching on for moments at a time before slipping away again. 

Snarling and dropping his head, Tony all but attacks Steve in a maelstrom of licking and biting at his chest. The taste and smell of him are perfectly overpowering, intoxicating, the salt and tang so much more intense now than earlier, their sensual dry heat boiling up into the messy, sticky, gorgeous filth of wanton sexual ardor.

He drags his flattened tongue in rough stripes up Steve's ribs, leaves imprints with his teeth, licks and sucks at one nipple while rolling the other in his fingers. Steve's not quiet anymore, broad chest heaving, gritting out long, loud groans at the raw, lascivious carnality of Tony's onslaught. "Hnnnnnnnn, oh God, oh, Tony..."

Tony just laughs darkly and works his way further down Steve's body, his hot mouth staying busy soaking Steve's skin. He backs up till he's astride Steve’s thighs, chest pressed flat over his groin, chin just above his waistband, and lifts his head, smirking up at Steve though sooty lashes. Steve's hands have fallen lax onto his chest, and his face is a disaster, slack-mouthed and glassy-eyed, pupils completely lust-blown, flushed from his forehead all the way down his body. Tony is destroying him, and it's everything they both could want.

Keeping their eyes pinned, Tony scoots himself back further, inflaming them both in equal parts as he rubs himself against Steve's legs. He runs his hands up Steve's hips, his thumbs pulling the already stretched fabric snug around the long outline of his erection, then slides them up his flanks.

Steve is sweat-dampened, fine-grained skin under Tony’s fire-toughened palms, grooves of of hard-cut abdominals that engulf Tony’s fingers, trail of fine, tawny hair spanning navel to waistband roughed under Tony’s dragging thumbs.

He holds eye contact with Steve for another long second, then plunges his head back down. They're absolutely not at this stage of things yet, but the temptation is too great; he closes his teeth around Steve's fly, around the hard ridge of his blanketed cock, and bites down lightly, just once.

"TONY!" The explosive yell punches itself out of Steve's body. He arches, hips snapping up, a deep tremor roiling through him as Tony sits up over his thighs, hands braced at Steve's hips, his weight just enough to keep Steve from completely unseating him. Tony’s baring teeth in a maniacal grin, his eyes gleaming, rich with delight in the reaction he's provoked. 

"Well, that definitely exceeded expectation,” he pronounces gleefully.

"Understatement," Steve pants. "God, hell, Tony, your  _ mouth _ ."

"You will not convince me you intend for that to mean anything bad."

"No, I do not. I've always liked your mouth. I like it more now."

"I have a great mouth," Tony agrees. "The question is just how great. Did you...?" Although Steve’s response had been violent enough, Tony doesn't think so, and doesn't see or feel any telltale wet spots on Steve's clothing.

Steve's shaking his head. "No, but... close."

"Mmmm. Is it time to do something about that?"

"I... yeah. What about you?"

"Oh, yeah. I wanna get off with your huge hands all over me." His dick twitches in his pants just from conjuring the mental image with those words. He tugs at Steve's waistband, and waits for permission. "Shall we?"

Steve waves a hand. "Be my guest."   But the quickness of his breath and the finely strung tautness of his body belie the casualness of the invitation. Steve is aching for this; he just admitted it.  

The fittings skin-warm, Tony pops the button and slides down the zipper, metal teeth parting eagerly as he rolls it down the hard line of Steve’s straining erection. He spreads the sides of his fly with both hands, and then, reversing the path of the zipper, traces a thumb straight back up Steve’s cock through his briefs. 

Steve hisses and shudders at the most direct stimulation he’s received, but holds himself otherwise still, tightly contained.

Breathless, lust-heated and sweat-chilled, Tony is feverish, his throat thick with anticipation at the prospect of shredding that control, centering himself in the explosion of Steve’s pent-up arousal. Unable to hold himself back, and with no reason to, he scrapes his blunt nails from Steve’s navel down his belly, just to see those rock-hard muscles quiver and tremble once more. Reaching his waistband, he takes hold, stretching and lifting the elastic of his briefs within the spread fly, his mouth watering at the first glimpse of the broad cockhead nosing out.

As if they'd coordinated it in advance, he raises himself off of Steve's thighs at the same time Steve flexes his hips upward, allowing Tony to yank the jeans and underwear down and out from under his ass. He knee-walks himself backwards, pulling them down Steve's thickly muscled legs. Once they've cleared his knees, Tony steps down, reaching one foot to the side and behind himself to stand next to the bed, Steve helping kick his legs and feet the last of the way free of the bunched clothing.

Tony drops the bundle to the floor without a further glance or thought for anything but Steve's fully nude body magnificently stretched out before him. He rakes his eyes over Steve's form, taking in the picture he presents, laid out in a long sprawl, his peak-perfection body on display in peak masculinity, heavy balls filling the space between his thighs, and thick cock curving rampant over his belly, flushed deep pink against the paler skin.

And uncut, too, Jesus God, and he’d still been rubbing himself raw? The man has to have been utterly mauling himself. But whatsoever he may have gotten up to recently, there are no signs of chafing present to put a damper on anything right now, Tony is immensely grateful to note.

He grinds the heel of his hand against his own crotch, damming back the burgeoning swell of lust just a little longer, and there's nothing to hide the bob of Steve’s cock when Tony handles his own.

"Tony," Steve growls.

Tony raises his eyebrows expectantly, not bothering with a verbal acknowledgment.

"Take your pants off."  

The quiet demand slams into him. It's really not a thing Tony likes, being ordered around, in or out of the bedroom. But Steve directing him to this, so commanding and sure, sets a fervor broiling in his veins, and it’s so easy after all to turn himself over to Steve’s will when he’s asking for something Tony is already willing and eager to give.

He nods, not trusting himself to speak through his dry throat. His hands go to his waist, no show to make of it. That's something they can explore in the future; today, baring it all is already brand-new.

Tony repeats his work of a few moments ago, unbuttoning and unzipping, sliding hands down into both layers of pants to push them down his legs, and bending at the waist to step out of them. He hears an appreciatively sighed, “Oh, you’re beautiful,”  but doesn't register where the words are coming from till he straightens to find Steve waiting in front of him, the rustle of his clothing having masked any slight sounds Steve made in standing up from the bed.

Steve crowds into him, greedily gathering him into his arms, spreading his legs for Tony to step between them.

And then their bodies are meeting in so many ways at once that they blur together, losing all sense of sequential order, a series of entangled points linked by wild surges of electrical current scorching through every connection on the grid.

Tony reaches around Steve's narrow waist, drops his hands to dig into the solid muscle of his coveted ass, and lifts his head to meet the kiss Steve's diving down for, lips pulling at each other and tongues scraping against teeth. His cock finds friction in the groove of Steve's hip, skidding and sliding infuriatingly as they press together, and Steve's nudges against his stomach, leaving smudges of wet. Their bodies sway together, weight shifting on their feet, hips and shoulders counterbalancing one another as they form a dual center of gravity.

When they break for air, they're both panting harshly, their eyes stormy. Steve gets his hands onto Tony's shoulders, pushing a little space between them. Forced to relinquish his armlock, Tony scrabbles his hands against Steve's chest, knuckling into flesh and muscle, mesmerized by the long curve of Steve's torso undulating beneath his wayward touches, so at odds with the short, sharp thrusts Steve’s hips are making between them.

"Uhhhh, I need, I need to..." Steve holds Tony in place with his left hand, and reaches down with his right to grasp the base of his own heavy cock. He groans as he pumps it just once before cinching his grip just underneath the head. Instantly, Tony's got his hands down there wanting a piece of things, and it quickly becomes a jumble of too many hands in too small a space. Even this, the uncoordinated fumbling and bumping of cock heads and shafts against palms and fingers and each other is tantalizing, a taunting glimpse of the heights they’re striving for.

Steve captures one of Tony's questing hands with his own, stilling them between their bellies. "Whoa, slow down, take it easy..."

"Hnnn, right, ok." Tony at first resists, then acquiesces. He takes a small step back, just enough to give them room to arrange themselves into a more strategic formation, each with a hand around the other's shaft, Tony's right hand at Steve's hip and Steve's left on Tony's shoulder.  Tony's not lacking in the assets department, but Steve's hand around him is huge, and he himself has abundant ground to cover, with Steve's dick being appetizingly proportional to the rest of his impressive stature. Ardent sighs accompany their first loose, exploratory strokes, the direct stimulation finally sending the clear message to their hindbrains that their growing urgency is being met.

The slide of his engorged cock through the ring of Steve's thumb and fingers is glorious, and Tony's still experimenting in search of the rhythm that takes Steve to his favorite place, but they’ve barely gotten moving when they hit a roadblock. Inevitably, the rough friction becomes too overwhelming, both of them leaking just enough to get things sticky without really loosening anything up. Tony slows his hand and taps Steve on the hip with the other.

"Steve. Gorgeous. You gotta, gotta gimme a second here."  

Already adrift in a haze, Steve groans at the loss of momentum. “Uhhnnh, feels good, why’re we stopping?”  He takes a few seconds to respond, but finally eases his right hand away from Tony’s cock, his left sliding down from Tony’s shoulder to his elbow as he relaxes his posture.

Once their hands have de-occupied the erogenous zone, Tony blows out a sigh of both frustration and relief, refocusing from waist level back to eye level. Damn, Steve’s cute when he's dopey with lust, he notes fondly, his heart swelling. Or maybe the swelling is all just his dick, which really doesn't want to be stopping either. But they’ll be on their way to a much happier ending if they take care of this piece of business now.

"Oh, yeah, we're gonna keep this good thing going, gorgeous, but there's something we need first. You remember your--ahhh, God, Steve!"

Steve's reached right back down to fondle Tony's balls, rolling the folds of skin between his fingers, and making coherent speech a challenge, but Tony is all about the challenges.

"C’mon, you remember your little, nnn, interruption, in my supply chain? Yeah, uhhh, that bottle of lube that had you so h-hot?"

"Yeah, I remember our lube." Steve smiles at him endearingly.

Laughter and euphoria blossom into a riotous bouquet in Tony’s soul. Steve’s hand continues to do filthy things between his legs, but now that the initial shock has worn off, it’s easier to float along the surface of that limpid current without sinking under.

"Oh, honey, you're getting sentimental about our lube already? That's amazing. You're delicious. Mmm. Delectable,” he extols. “Makes me wanna... wanna get that bottle, so we can get back to this business at hand!"  

He brings his left hand up to mirror his right, so both are resting at Steve’s waist, and leans forward, an exploratory shift of his weight in hopes of steering them in the direction of the nightstand, but feet planted, Steve just takes it as a cue to keep rolling and tugging gently at Tony's testicles, sending devilish little spikes lancing through his groin and belly.

"Fuck, Steve, come on, just take a couple of steps back, sweetheart, and we'll be back in business sooner than you can, hnn, do... something soon..." Ok, his brain's not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment either, Steve's handling of him still a diabolical distraction.  

Steve seems to have finally gotten the message, though, and thankfully, disappointingly, drops Tony's balls and steps backwards till he's close enough to duck his knee and shoulder, leaning down and back to pull open the nightstand drawer. He straightens back up with a smile of triumph on his face, and his prize in his right hand.

"Oh, look, our lube is back where it came from!" he announces, sounding much more present than he had a few seconds ago.

Tony can’t help but grin. Putting something right back where he found it is so very Steve, even if they hadn’t just agreed a short while earlier that sharing this particular bottle would be a bucket-list item. But playing along, he proposes the most immediately obvious conclusion. “Must be magic!”

Eyes twinkling with amusement, Steve calls him out on it straightaway. "You hate magic.”

"You’re different. You keep being magic, and I’ll make you my exception." Tony affects an offended pout.

Attempting to play it straight, Steve tries to stifle his grin, but achieves only minimal success. “That’s… magnanimous of you.” He gives it up for lost and laughs it off, a smile in his voice and on his mouth, but seduction in his words. “Well, turns out I’m just the man behind the curtain, but I’m pretty sure I can make it worth your while.”

There’s nothing Tony can do  _ but _ pay attention, gazing rapt, like he’d happily go blind if it meant one more moment in Steve’s light. “Courage, brains, and heart,” he murmurs, smiling brilliantly. He leans in, tilting his face up for a kiss, just to steal a taste of Steve’s laughter from his tongue. Their lips linger before parting. 

“So how about it, ready to let this genie out of the bottle?” Tony suggests, reaching for the lube in Steve’s hand.

Steve’s fingers tighten around the bottle, curling it a fraction of an inch away from Tony.

“Steve?”

“Tony, I’m not sure.  I… actually, I might need another minute.  I was so close…” Steve ducks his head. “I’m afraid I’m gonna go off the second you touch me again.”

“Hey, Sunshine, look at me.” Tony pets through the hair at Steve’s forehead and down behind his ear, stopping at his jaw to tip his chin up. He waits till he has Steve’s eyes again. “This isn’t a contest to see who can come in last. We both know you can hit the finish line more than once anyway. So if you’re there, let it all go. I’ll be cheering you on, and you can catch me on your victory lap.”

“That’s just it though. It’s our first time together, and--” Steve doesn’t pull away from Tony’s hand, but drops his eyes back down. “--it’d be nicer if we could go together.”

Tony’s breath quickens. “That… does have its appeal. So, uh, yellow flag, slow it down a minute, and I’ll be your pace car. I did have myself a nice time in the shower this morning, so I might be a little behind anyway, could use the head start.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively.

“Not helping,” Steve mutters.

“Right, sorry.” Tony laughs. “Less hot thoughts right now. Ok.” He slips his hands free of Steve’s face and his waist, rubbing them together in front of him speculatively, leaving Steve’s hand hovering at his elbow. “I know, how ‘bout this. You had questions--about the lube?” He crosses his arms, and Steve’s hand settles back into place, their only remaining point of contact.

Steve glances back up at him. “Oh, um. Right. Yeah.” Turning his attention back to the bottle in his hand, he studies the simple white surface. A looping red script logo proclaims, 'Come With Me,' with smaller black block letters underneath stating, ‘Seems Like Semen.’    
  
“So, really, just, what’s the story with this, uh, semen-simulating lube? I mean, I get that it's made to resemble, um, what it's named for--"

“Come, you mean?” Tony rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning like a loon, and  it’s comedically exaggerated, entirely lacking the razored-edge of some of his earlier witticisms. “As in,  _ come on _ , Handy-Cap, we’ve been through this, how’re you gonna do it if you can’t even say it?”

"Oh, don't you even worry. I think you'll find it comes to me pretty naturally." Steve grins wolfishly at him. 

Tony breaks into a mad cackle, but cuts it short when Steve catches his eye, the wolf starting to show some teeth, hard and sharp.

"And also, you promised,” Steve reminds him sternly. “No horrible Cap nicknames in bed.”

Tony eyes the unoccupied bed meaningfully.

Steve sighs. "In the bed _ room _ . Just.. no, Tony, please,” he importunes.

"But if we're sexing it up in another room…?" Tony gives it up to Steve's glare. "Alright, alright, I’m sorry," he placates, hands up at chest level in surrender, then re-crosses them.   
  
Steve nods and squeezes Tony’s arm lightly, apology accepted, and with no further segue, Tony jumps them back to the topic at hand.

"Anyway, the cum-lube thing. So in the most basic sense, you don't do anything different with it than with any other lube. Might feel a little different, like they all do in their own way..."

As Tony speaks, Steve lets go of his arm, transferring the bottle to his left hand, flipping open the top, and squeezing out a small amount, just enough to roll a few drops between his fingers. He tests the texture, finding out for himself some of what Tony's explaining.

Discomfited by the sudden absence of any bodily contact between them, Tony brushes the backs of his knuckles down Steve’s ribs and replaces his right hand over the point of Steve’s hipbone. His left remains free to talk along with his mouth, adding its expansive gestures to Tony’s exposition.

"...this stuff's a little heavier, a little thicker, than some other types, which can be good or bad, depending on, you know, the exact context..."

Steve pours a more generous amount into his hand. "How 'bout this context," he says roughly, still holding the bottle in his left hand, and reaching down for Tony with his lube-covered right.

"I'm, oh, mmmm." Tony pants. "Yeah. I'm not done talking. Oh, don't stop, uhhh, pace car, I can... multitask."

Steve pumps his fist up and down Tony's cock, his grip a little snugger than before, the dry rasp of skin replaced by lewd, obscene squelching as he spreads the silky liquid around to coat the ridges and veins of Tony’s shaft.

"Context, yeah, good, mm, fuck, a little harder."

Steve accedes, and Tony moans, his patter tripping out quick and breathless as he further expounds. “...it’s flavored to match, and depending on what you're into, that can be a downer or kind of a turn-on--fuck,  _ so _ turned on, keep going, yeah, like that, ahhh--but since I'm usually uh, flying solo, that aspect’s not so important, usually, huh--” he gasps, “--melting in my hands, not in my mouth, if you know what I mean..." His voice rises and falls in pitch with the alternating directions of Steve’s hand, accompanied by the wet, spongy sounds.

"You're not solo now." Steve reassures Tony with an extra little twist and jerk on the next upstroke, thumb curling over the head of his cock as if to highlight his participation.

“I am... not solo, so high, soooo happy you're here," Tony croons. Oh, yeah, that’s happiness pouring down the length of him, flowing down to his balls and shooting though the rest of him like his cock is a way in instead of out.

"Mmm, me too," Steve agrees, varying his grip, keeping his hand closed on some strokes, and on others, loosening to just the circle of his thumb and first couple of fingers, leaving more of Tony’s glistening cock open to view.

Ass clenched tight and knees bending to cant his hips up, Tony's sinking into the slide of Steve's hand, every glide over his slickened skin lifting heat to the surface elsewhere, lighting him up in constantly shifting hot flashes flickering around his body.

Words haven't entirely departed him yet, just become more laborious, choppy phrases stitched together by involuntary grunts and colorful exhortations, as he picks up his dangling thread, determined to complete the product-features tour.

"...the lube, also, it has a--” 

Steve gives his cock a long, tight upstroke.  

“--hnnn... a little smell to go along with it--”

A corkscrewing downstroke. 

“--uhhh...so you’ll get a whiff of something, oh, hah, ohhhh--”  His hips judder spasmodically, trying to keep up, as Steve delivers three short, fast pumps in quick succession. 

”--something other than yourself here and there, mmnn, right  _ there _ \--” he begs, after a devastating twist of Steve’s hand just behind his cockhead.  

“--just, it can, can kinda spice things up a little--ah, a little, a lot, please, just mooore--” he pants sharply.   
  
“--when you've been cooking for yourself for a while--” His inflection, already rising, makes a sudden octave leap. “--AHH, nonononono, Steve, what the  _ fuck _ ?"

Tony breaks off into a squawk of desperation and disbelief, fingers clawing bruisingly into Steve's hip, and clapping his left hand over the arc reactor as Steve lets go mid-stroke to bring his hand up to his own face. He sniffs, then shrugs and takes hold of Tony again, making him shudder and sigh in relief and relax his pincer-grip. "Oh God, what're you, trying to give me a heart attack? I mean, what an awful way to go, left high and dry ‘cause Capt _ uhhhhnnn _ ..."

Sensing another terrible nickname on the way, Steve nips it in the bud by increasing his tempo, pushing his hand all the way into the patch of short, springy hair at the base of Tony's cock on the downstrokes, hard enough for his fingers to press into the deep-seated internal root.**

It’s effective as intended in diverting Tony’s attention, the p ull on the skin at the top of his sack becoming a hotly tugging band that stretches down underneath his balls and wraps back up to his tailbone. He spreads his stance and deepens the bend of his knees at the intense stimulation,  but yet retains sufficient power of speech to pant and moan his way through one more fun fact to conclude his spiel.

“--uhhhnnnevermind, just don’t forget, uh, uh, the best thing about cum-lube, uh,  _ ohh _ , is that it’s made to be used with, huh, uh, with cum- _ dildos,  _ nugghh!”

With a supreme effort, Steve manages to keep working Tony’s dick rather than put him in danger of another near-heart attack. “Oh my God, Tony, please tell me you’re joking, like with the lab and the machine oil!”

Now Tony’s approaching barely articulate, answering effortfully, bright golden tongues licking up his nerves from between his legs and lashing out like solar flares to disrupt transmission lines. He shakes his head heavily from side to side in half-time to the sloppy sounds of Steve’s hand on him.

“No...joke… Cum-dildos, hnnnn, pump reservo _ ahhhh _ , God, oh, shit, don’t even... worry ‘bout it, nuh, now, nnnnnnghh,  _ later _ !”   
  
Steve seems to take this as the best possible advice, letting the new curveball fly right over his head in the interests of continuing to propel Tony into the throes of madness.

Finally reduced to a string of curses and incomprehensible babble, Tony’s gasping between every couple of words, scouring his left hand over his own chest and nipples to generate sparking bursts of crosstalk with his cock, and thrusting into Steve's hand as he’s stroked relentlessly higher.

The attention Steve’s bestowing upon Tony’s cock is spectacular, but it’s everything about his presence that’s feeding into Tony’s spiral. Sweat-spiked and bed-ruffled, Steve’s hair looks like it does coming out from under the cowl after a fight, and his eyes, wide and intent, flick avidly back and forth from Tony's face to their symbiotic motion between his legs. His chest is as flushed as his face, lifting and filling impossibly wider with every huge, deep breath. And his own cock is unflaggingly hard, jutting high and proud despite being ignored, the only attention it's receiving being occasional brushes against the inside of Steve's flexing forearm.

He's enthusiastically invested, but still far more composed than Tony, who at this point is biting at his bottom lip, eyes squinted to slits, and flailing his left hand in the air toward Steve.

"Lube, gimme the… mmm’caught up now… wanna… oh, fuck... do you too..." Steve gleans from amidst Tony's gibberish, and he presses the bottle, still open in his free hand, into Tony's. Fortunately, Tony still retains a higher level of physical coordination tha n verbal, and without fully opening his eyes, he shakily squeezes out enough lube to fill his left palm, fumbles the bottle shut with his right, and tosses it over onto the bed.

A few drops splatter on the floor when he reaches down half-blindly for Steve's cock, moaning in appreciation as the hard length crosses his well-lubricated palm. Now that he’s given to reciprocate, the static fizzing through his brain begins to clear, leaving him no less effervescent, but less deeply in thrall to the obliteration of Steve’s touch.

Several more drops of liquid spatter the floor, pressed out around and between, as he gauges Steve’s circumference with pulsing, rolling squeezes of his clever fingers, the meat of his thumb, the heel of his hand. Steve groans heavily at the erotic massage created by the wetly varying pressure points.

Now that neither of them is devoting a hand to the lube bottle, Tony’s right returns to its resting place at the damp, heated skin of Steve’s waist, with Steve’s left once again braced behind Tony’s elbow. Tony fists Steve's cock in slow, firm strokes, luxuriating in the long, sleek slide from root to tip and back. Every third or fourth round, he ventures down further, taking the weight of Steve's lightly furred balls into his palm, and rubbing up the back of them with teasing fingertips before making the return upstroke.

Tony's skillful ministrations upon his body are keeping a buzzing under Steve's skin, and a near-constant jagged hum pouring forth from his throat, breaking only at his rushed inhalations. He lets it all carry him, slowing his frenzied pumping of Tony's cock into a stroke that’s steady, but still almost double-timing the tortuously slow pace he’s receiving from Tony.

Tony murmurs in satisfaction, one more layer to the clouds wreathing Steve, like the length of his cock is mapped to the height of his body, like Tony’s hand sheaths him from head to toe, like every lingering pull lasts an eon, swamping him in a new sensual wave.

They sway closer to one another, the air close and musky between their sweat-glossed bodies, the music still throbbing far off in the background, as though they’ve passed through to a smaller private room. 

Tony lets his head fall forward to rest against Steve, teething into the firm, resilient curve of muscle making up the juncture of his neck and shoulder, tasting him and breathing him in. Leaning against him like this, everything is amplified: every quake and muscle contraction rippling through, every broken sound, and Tony's whole body is rocking with the motion of Steve's steadily thrusting hips.

His own arousal is concentrated thick and heavy, the air pounding out of him at every breath, Steve’s solid grip and hard rhythm holding him at a stratospheric plateau. Yet more than chasing his own completion, he's entranced by the coiled power of Steve's body and his abandon to the flesh.

Beguiled by the way Steve gives himself over, Tony craves his impassioned responses all the more. It’s shameful, a travesty, he thinks, if his beautifully built and keenly sensitive body isn’t being taken apart in pleasure at least as often as it’s torn apart in combat. No matter the intent, everything about him is perfectly tuned for the one every bit as much as the other.

He slides his right hand inward from Steve's hip to slip it between his legs, rubbing the back of it against the skin and almost invisible hairs of his inner thigh, and takes over a more insistent manipulation of his balls from there.

Shifting his stroke higher on Steve’s cock, he targets the wide, sloping curve of the head, cupping and repeatedly rotating his palm over the velvety skin, and concentrating on brushing two fingertips over and over across the ultra-sensitive notch where his foreskin connects at the underside. He starts softly there, measuring the responses and gradually dragging over the spot harder and harder, till he can feel Steve seething and  spasming , torn between pushing in and pulling away from the near-overstimulation. Steve’s long since lost the composure he’d clung to earlier, breath coming out in broken cries beating out their tempo, interrupted by the occasional long shuddering exhale.

"C'mon, c'mon, yeah, that's it," Tony entreats, working Steve's dick and balls in counterpoint. It’s wickedly tempting to test how loud he could make Steve roar with a knuckle behind his balls or a fingertip probing back a little further, but he’s just not certain enough what kinds of things Steve has tried or liked. Regrettably, that will have to wait for later, but he’s cheered by the thought that Steve’s apparently raging libido will ensure lots of laters.

But for now, they’ve already got Steve right back on the verge, if his increasingly desperate state is any indication. Tony’s more than caught up himself, and if it weren’t for that shower earlier, he’s certain he wouldn’t have lasted three minutes at this blistering pace before blowing sky-higher than a ballistic missile. As it is, he can feel it building, tension ratcheting like the turn of a giant gear cranking down on every muscle in his body as one, his thighs quivering and glutes nearly to the point of cramping as his body strains toward its peak. The tremors racing through him coalesce to a central point in his groin and fracture into kaleidoscopic splinters of light and color, driving him to push through the burn in his forearm to jerk Steve faster and harder. It’s time; he knows the end is near, and he aches to meet Steve’s wish and drag him over the edge as close along with himself as possible.

With a few more fast, twisting strokes of Steve's hand, Tony's balls draw tight. He hangs aloft over empty air, starting up a supplication that builds from nearly subvocal to a scream.

"Oh God, Steve, please, don't stop, do  _ not _ stop, so close, so good, fucking hell goddamnfuck, STEEEEVE!"

His body seizes. Head thrown back and howling Steve’s name, Tony’s hand gropes upward to clamp down at his hip, his fist continuing to stagger over Steve’s cock in fits and starts. Back bowing and pushing up onto his toes, he trusts Steve to be his anchor through the fall. Sheets of fire crackle through his blood as he comes in thick, pulsing spurts, Steve's hand furiously pulling him through it.

"Tony, ohhh, that's beautiful, perfect," Steve nearly sobs, breathless and awed, the sight and sense of taking Tony through his orgasm bringing him to the edge of climax himself.

Tony's still coming down from the aftershocks, seeing stars behind his eyelids, wavering on legs turned to water, muscle tics blinking around his limbs, and mind emptied of all but the imperative to keep his leaden arm moving for Steve, when he feels Steve's hips stutter and clench, Steve’s hand falling lax on Tony’s cock just as Tony’s becoming too sensitive for it.   


"Ohhhh, oh Tony, I'm gonna, Jesus holy God, Tony, TONY!"

He drags his eyes open to see Steve's face contort in exquisite agony, a long, guttural cry torn from his throat with each plunge of his swelling cock into Tony's hand, each white ribboning stream arcing to the floor.  

Steve’s rapture is Tony’s epiphany, and it lifts him on a second wind. "Do it, lemme have it all, gorgeous, fuuuck, so goddamned hot!"

Tony works him through it, his own heart rate still elevated, giving them both time to recover. When he slackens his hand and looks up to meet Steve’s eyes, they're huge and dark, pupils dilated inside the thinnest ring of blue, Steve gradually returning to reality after the stunning force of his orgasm.

After a few more breaths, Tony reluctantly disengages, summoning the energy to bend down and pick up one of the dirty t-shirts from the floor. He wipes off his lube-and-come-coated hand and makes a quick pass between his legs, before folding the mess to the inside and handing it to Steve to do the same. When Steve's done, he looks at the soiled cloth blankly, uncertain what to do, then hands it back to Tony, who tosses it in the general direction of the laundry hamper. It falls just short, landing on the floor at the base.

Tony shrugs and steps back toward Steve, pressing in and wrapping him in a tight hug, which is eagerly returned, hands freely wandering over each other from shoulders as far down as they can reach, and the extra warmth welcome as their sweat cools. A while later, Steve gives a soft squeeze to the back of Tony's neck.  

"Tony, hey." He coaxes Tony's head up from his shoulder, and lays his hand against Tony's face, the pad of his thumb stroking over his cheekbone. "That was amazing. Thank you."

Tony ducks his head into Steve's hand, fluttering his eyes half shut. "Ah, nothing to thank me for.  Or at least I should be too. Thank  _ you _ . That was...you were gorgeous, so damn gorgeous."

Steve blushes and smiles. "Mmmm, you were too. But, um... I think we made a mess all over your nice hardwood."

Tony looks down between them, then leers at him. "Oh, that we sure did." He reaches down to give Steve's softened penis a little touch.

"Floor. Your hardwood..." Steve realizes what he’s saying, blushes again, and groans. "Whatever. You're not hard anymore anyway."

"Mmm, nope. You either. Floor’ll last till later, but I think the hardest thing I can manage right now is climbing back into bed. You gonna 'Come With Me’?" Tony smiles seductively and lifts a hand in invitation.

Steve smiles back and takes his hand. "Yes, I will. I’ll come with you anytime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **There actually is a horrible Cap nickname that Tony was about to let loose before Steve took measures. It didn't make sense to include it in the story itself, but I did want to share the joke. What Tony would have said is: "Oh God, what're you, trying to give me a heart attack? I mean, what an awful way to go, left high and dry ‘cause Captain American't finish what he started!" Yes, it's definitely better that Tony was not permitted to finish the sentence!
> 
> I have never personally used cum-lube or an ejaculating dildo. I did a small amount of research, but made up some additional "product details" to suit the story. The brand name is also fictional and of my own invention. Call it "artistic licentiousness." :D


	6. Fallen Soldiers

Spent, on jellied limbs, they collapse back onto the bed, tugging at the twisted covers till they untangle enough to pull around themselves. They nestle together in a full-body cuddle, arms and legs finding places around each other as if they were longtime lovers, instead of strangers to one another's bodies until an hour ago.

They seek out each other's mouths, kissing soft and lazy, afloat on their endorphin rush, until Tony shifts and feels a lump under his leg through the covers.

"Urgh, why’m I sleeping on a rock, my bed should not be like camping in the woods!” he whines.

Steve looks at him in confusion, as Tony unburies an arm from their nest and roots around till he finds it--their bottle of lube, now nearly empty. Mournfully, he shows it to Steve. “Look, it’s our fallen soldier.”

“A tragic end,” Steve intones, and with a sad smile, he delivers the eulogy. “A hero to us both, we salute your sacrifice in the line of duty. You have done us a great service, and you will not be forgotten.”

Tony continues the lament. "Our grief is inconsolable; you can never be replaced. We'll erect a monument to your memory," he embellishes, seemingly facetious, but scoots up to carefully place the bottle on the headboard where it won't get lost.

He bundles back in, stretching out along Steve’s side and half on top of him. As Steve’s left arm comes around to encircle his shoulders, Tony leans up to whisper in his ear, "Actually it can be replaced.  Wanna know a secret? I have another bottle in the drawer!"

Steve doesn’t bother with Tony’s ear, just stage-whispers to the room, "And the entire internet's worth arriving by the truckload!"

Tony laughs."That too. I think we might need all of it.”

"I'm game if you are." Steve turns his head to give him a simple, closed-mouthed kiss, then lets Tony prolong it, tracing the seam of Steve’s mouth with the tip of his tongue, and in turn, drawing in each of Steve’s lips, and then his tongue, to suck and nibble. Replete, at once drained and energized from their orgasms, this enjoyment of one another is leisurely and unprovocative, but the lush warmth and soft, wet sounds are sweetly decadent.

Steve cradles Tony’s head with his right hand as they kiss, then slides it down the line of him, shoulder to ribs to hipbone. He palms the generous curve of Tony’s backside, follows the turn along the raised thigh flung over his hips, and stops just below Tony’s knee to rub gently at the skin and wiry hair over the sturdy muscle of his calf.

With a sigh of contentment, Tony hitches his leg a little higher, tucking his head into Steve’s shoulder and his hands between them, Steve’s heartbeat deep and steady under his cheek.

He breathes out as many words as ever, but they’re sliding out drowsy and soft, cushioned on the air instead of breaking the sound barrier

“Mmm, you’re a good pillow. ‘S’that mean we can have pillow talk? ‘Cause I really wanna know, back in the day where you were this shy, stuttering innocent--"

Steve smacks him lightly on the shoulder.

"Whaaat? You were stuttering. ‘Kay, maybe not so much the shy and innocent.  But back in the bygone era a few days ago, you said a thing about getting yourself off a lot. Or, rather, I said it for you, after much effortful divination--”

Tony’s been dancing around the subject for long enough that Steve finds further cause to interrupt. "Hey, if I hadn't brought up my embarrassing chafing problem, we probably wouldn't be here now,” Steve reminds him.

"Point.” Tony turns his head to mouth a kiss onto Steve’s chest. “Thank you for making an excuse to talk to me about sex. I am very glad you did that, and I do have just this one more question: How many times a day _have_ you been doing it, to end up with the chafing?”

Steve laughs, rumbling under him. “Just curious, or do you have a reason for asking?" He tugs lightly at Tony’s earlobe, then soothes it by tracing along the shell of his ear and the tender hollow behind it.

“Mmmm.” Bliss pulls Tony’s eyes closed and the corners of his mouth open, goosebumps flashing down his neck to his throat like lines of light on a carnival ride. “Both. Inquiring mind. Competitive spirit. Gotta make sure I give you at least that many.” Tony can’t see the look of longing that crosses Steve’s face, but the tightening of Steve’s arm around him tells him the idea appeals.

“But what about you?” Steve asks.

"Me?” Tony sighs again, this time regretful. “Sadly, I can assure you with zero margin of error, that I will not be able to come as many times as you can. But that won’t stop me from enthusiastically helping get you off as often as you can get hard!”

Steve trails his fingers from Tony’s ear down to the corner of his jaw, resting there at his pulse point. “I might not need as many. I’d usually be on number two or three by now, but I liked waiting. It was so much better with you.” He sounds so pleased, mellow and loose.

Tony is well satisfied by the note of tranquility audible in Steve’s voice, and the perceptible ease in his muscles. He wiggles his shoulders and hips in what would probably be some kind of sexy shimmy if he were standing. “Pretty damn fine, if I do say so.”

“Pretty damn fine, I say too,” Steve agrees, and squeezes his knee. “But let’s just say it’s something that’s still gonna happen more than once every day. We can set up an experiment to test the theory, and then see if we can repeat the results, isn't that the scientific approach?"

Rolling his head back, Tony smiles up at him beatifically. "My heart. You listened to something I said about science."

Steve leans down to buss him on the lips again.  "I listen to a lot of things you say, Tony. And I did tell you I like your mouth."

"Careful, I might think you're asking me to help you with blowjobs next."

"And you might even be right.” Steve eyes him, sleepy, sultry, half-lidded. He walks his hand from Tony’s neck across his cheek to let his third finger drag over his bottom lip, dipping inside to the warm, slick wetness. Tony closes his mouth around it, touching with his tongue and applying gentle suction for the moment before it slips away.

He hears Steve give a helpless moan, as if extrapolating from that tease to all the sinful things Tony could do with his mouth. Tony's dick twitches, very much interested, but it’s still wishful thinking for the time being. Still, it does not pass unnoticed.

"Ohh, you ready to go again?” Steve asks, voice gone gravelly.

Tony laughs, low and rich. "Sorry, babe, Not quite.  But when I am, you know what I’m gonna do?”

"I'm guessing you'll get hard again, for starters,” Steve deadpans, still in his lowest, darkest register.

"Hard-y har,” Tony mocks through his smile, reaching over to tweak Steve’s nipple. Steve gives another desultory swat to Tony’s back, huffing out two short bursts of a smoky laugh, which almost immediately morphs into a shuddering groan. He pulls his hand from Tony’s knee to lace his fingers with Tony’s over his chest.

Tony’s heart makes a lazy roll. The motes of simple affection amidst the lust and sex are still so new and surprisingly dear to him. He recalculates, adjusting for the new element.  If he can’t have as many orgasms as Steve, he knows how he wants to make up the difference.

They breathe together in a momentarily lull, the room quiet but for their faint respiration and the subtly swelling classical music JARVIS must have switched to without being asked. Tony’s reverie is gently interrupted by Steve’s voice, drawled and dreamy.

“We still doin’ pillow talk? ‘Cause there was somethin’ else you were s’posed to tell me about, Mr. Don’t Forget the Best Thing.”

It takes Tony a minute to remember what he’d said at that very inopportune moment, and then his mouth opens in a wide ‘O’ of surprise. “You mean the cum-dildos?  Sure, if you really wanna know.”

Tony can feel more than see Steve’s nod. “Yeah, tell me about those. Please?”

He smiles at the little extra afterthought of courtesy. “I will. But to start with, considering your recent re-education in the realm of lube, lemme ask you: How much do you know about sex toys?”

Steve chuckles softly. “Fair question, and the answer woulda been ‘not that much,’ but I’m pretty sure I got the crash course when I was shopping for the lube. Definitely filled in a few holes.”

A flash of heat runs through Tony, and he thinks maybe it won’t be long before he’s ready for another round after all. “Mmm, yeah, filling holes is indeed exactly what they’re for. Alright then, so now that we’ve, ahem, ascertained, that you’re not entirely unfamiliar with the premise of artificial cocks, you’re ready to hear about the next-level feat of ingenuity that is the ejaculating dildo…”

 

o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o*o

                    

They don’t leave Tony's suite again that day, indolently whiling away the hours lounging, ordering takeout via JARVIS and the private elevator, eating from the cartons in bed, alternating between cuddling and making out, napping, and going another couple of rounds of mutual masturbation, all of it mainly in the nude. The latter becomes increasingly mind-blowing with each successive iteration, as they amass a growing collection of buttons to push, a drawer full of erotic notions to exploit to maximum erogenous effect.

In the late evening, they fall asleep, satiated, Steve spooned behind Tony, and both of them slumbering more deeply and restfully than accustomed.

Steve wakes early in the morning, pulling himself away from a barely stirring, sleep-warm Tony with a deep breath of his tousled hair and a kiss pressed behind his ear, to go for a run.  

A couple of hours later, Tony drags himself out of bed around the time he figures Steve will be getting back. Finding that he’s erred a little to the side of sleep, but no harm done, he walks into the kitchen to the sight of a freshly showered Steve in another of those tiny t-shirts, standing at the stove in front of a pan of sizzling bacon, and wanders over to his side for a good morning kiss.

Spatula in one hand, Steve wraps the other around Tony’s back, flat palm between his shoulder blades keeping Tony pressed close and tight. They linger at each other’s lips, tasting toothpaste, and tongues and teeth, warm and tingling, igniting sparks all the way down into Tony’s sweatpants.

When they break, Tony nuzzles into what's already his favorite spot in the crook of Steve's neck and breathes in deeply.  "Mmm, smells good. So does breakfast.”

"You gonna eat?" Steve asks, eyes soft and palm circling on Tony’s back, knowing Tony's penchant for using coffee as a meal replacement.

Tony pulls back to leer at him, remaining at his side in the circle of his arm, and they just laugh, the implied, ‘I'll eat _you_ for breakfast’ not needing to be spoken.

"You could've come back up to use my shower, you know,” Tony offers.

"That's ok, I didn't want to wake you. Besides, I was hungry, and I thought that would probably lead to, um, missing breakfast."

Tony’s face lights up. "Oh, yeah, I’d love to make a meal of you in the shower."

"Exactly," Steve confirms drily, adding on a much more hesitant note, “Maybe... later though…?”  
  
“I’m not gonna say no.” Tony mutters, categorically unable to let that one go by, even though his response is all but buried when Steve continues without any real pause.

“Anyway, you're just in time. Food's all ready." He squeezes Tony’s shoulder, then picks up the skillet and carries it over to the table, lifting the cover from one of several large, rectangular silver pans, and adding the new slices to the top.

Tony looks at the row of pans, double-takes, and asks, "Where did these come from?"

Steve shrugs. "I don't know, they were set out when I came in. Figured someone was just getting ready to cook, so I went ahead, why?"

Tony looks at the pans once again, then looks at Steve. "Steve, do you know what these serving pans are called?"

"No, do they have a special name?"

"Yeah. In fact, JARVIS, would you please tell Steve the name of this particular item of kitchenware?"

"Of course, Sir. Captain, since Roman times, braziers in this style, originally charcoal-burning, have been used for foods that require gentle cooking, away from the ‘fierce’ heat of direct flames.  In modern times, they’re commonly used at table or on a buffet, no longer for cooking, but to keep prepared foods warmed to service temperature. Literary references from the early 1500s first ascribe to them the name still used today, derived from the French _chauffer_ , ‘to make warm.’ Thus we have here what are known as ‘chafing dishes.’

"Chafing... dishes.” Steve catches on, a quick study. “JARVIS, are you trying to tell us you need to be lubed up?"

"As a non-corporeal being, I have no physical body or mechanism requiring lubrication. However I do thank you for the consideration, in case I should have been lacking for any assistance, or as you say colloquially, were I to, ‘need a hand.'”

Steve and Tony snicker and grin madly, and Tony waves a hand above his head, flipping JARVIS the bird. Following the appetizing aromas, the other Avengers file into the kitchen, Natasha taking in the scene with a knowing glance and a delicately arched eyebrow, Bruce shaking his head in bemusement, mumbling, “Nope, don’t even want to know,” and Clint following them both, stumbling in half asleep.

With his world for the moment configured to his preferences, the audacious AI bids his creator, and his chosen compatriot, an auspicious start to their day.

“Sirs, please do enjoy your breakfast.”

 

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And they lived, laughed, and lubed handily ever after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fallen Soldiers" is party slang for the beer bottles or other alcohol bottles left abandoned but not completely empty. ("Dead Soldiers" refers to the empties.)
> 
> History of the chafing dish paraphrased from the wikipedia page:  
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chafing_dish>
> 
> And finally, once again, cum-lube and ejaculating dildos are definitely real things, although I fictionalized a few details about them, including the brand name of the lube, for the sake of the story. 
> 
> While it felt too cumbersome (pun inherent, though not actually intended) to work it into the story, my headcanon for how this became Tony's favorite lube goes something like this: In his younger and wilder days, he's tried everything and then some at least once, sexually speaking, including toys of this type. While I don't think he's particularly into them now, the lube itself seems to have served his needs well enough, and he's gone ahead and stuck with it. Probably as much as anything, because it's somewhat exotic and outrageous, much like Tony himself! 
> 
> I also strongly suspect that after all of this buildup, Steve's curiosity will eventually lead him to want to try out an ejaculating dildo, just to find out what it's like. Sometime down the road, at the appropriate point in their sex lives, I'm sure he and Tony will do some fun shopping and equip themselves to give it a go. But I'm also quite certain they'll both agree that when they've got each other, the simulation doesn't "come" anywhere close to the real thing. :)


End file.
